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what exactly is postmodernism, except modernism without the anxiety?


Jonathan Lethem

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Postmodernism was a reaction to modernism. Where modernism was about objectivity, postmodernism was ...
MIGUEL SYJUCO Amusing and perfectly self-conscious charlatans.
NOAM CHOMSKY The dominant theories of elite art and criticism in the 20th century grew out of a militant denial o...
STEVEN PINKER A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus understood is not modern...
JEAN FRANCOIS LYOTARD A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus understood is not modern...
JEAN-FRANCOIS LYOTARD French design hardly exists, except as artificial modernism.
CHRISTIAN LACROIX Postmodernism came nowhere close in quality to Modernism at its apogee, not least because that later...
MARTIN FILLER Lionel Essrog, the twitching, barking, gabbling narrator of Jonathan Lethem's new novel, 'Mo...
GARY KRIST In Modernism, reality used to validate media. In Postmodernism, the media validate reality. If you d...
BRAD HOLLAND And yet what is Modernism? It is undefined.
JOHN CROWE RANSOM For those whose ganglia were formed pre-TV, the mimetic deployment of pop-culture icons seems at bes...
JONATHAN LETHEM Post-modernism is modernism with the optimism taken out.
ROBERT HEWISON Stupidity is without anxiety.
JOHANN VON GOETHE Stupidity is without anxiety.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE In Modernism, reality used to validate media. In Postmodernism, the media validate reality. If you d...
BRAD HOLLAND Ques eso? Queso?
NOLAN J. VANDER HAAGEN In my third novel there is an actual black hole that swallows everything you love.
JONATHAN LETHEM The book is openly a kind of spiritual autobiography, but the trick is that on any other level it...
JONATHAN LETHEM I got into underground comics fairly early on and kind of wandered away from the superhero stuff, bu...
JONATHAN LETHEM I keep one simple rule that I only move in one direction - I write the book straight through from be...
JONATHAN LETHEM I never take any notes or draw charts or make elaborate diagrams, but I hold an image of the shape o...
JONATHAN LETHEM The past is still visible. The buildings haven't changed, the layout of the streets hasn't c...
JONATHAN LETHEM Discomfort is very much part of my master plan.
JONATHAN LETHEM Nerds are just deep, and neurotic, fans. Needy fans. We're all nerds, on one subject or another.
JONATHAN LETHEM Insomnia is a variant of Tourette's--the waking brain races, sampling the world after the world has ...
JONATHAN LETHEM There is nothing Tourettic about the New York City subways.
JONATHAN LETHEM I can't bear the silent ringing in my skull.
JONATHAN LETHEM My fiction has been influenced by the visual arts, though not in obvious ways, it seems to me. I don...
JONATHAN LETHEM I learned to write fiction the way I learned to read fiction - by skipping the parts that bored me.
JONATHAN LETHEM I try not to become too regular an addict of any one subculture.
JONATHAN LETHEM What's lucky about my career in general is that I stumbled into what every writer most wants. No...
JONATHAN LETHEM The cars rushing below knew nothing. People in cars weren't New Yorkers anyway, they'd suffered some...
JONATHAN LETHEM I mean, what is prison, really, except a good bar without the liquor?
JOHN WATERS It is exactly the same format except it's on Henderson Street.
DENNIS CASE Modernism had two great wishes. It wanted its audience to be led toward a recognition of the social ...
T.J. CLARK When push comes to shove would people do what they felt was right, to get justice done or would they...
GARY F EVANS... Don't play dead with a vulture. That's exactly what they want.
KEVIN NEALON In India there’s no modernism without barbarism. Strip away the young man’s face and you’ll fi...
MEGHNA PANT What interests me, and has always interested me, has been modernism.
PETER GAY When they see that, they know exactly what it is without having to read it.
TOM SHAHEEN She buys "mixed salad greens" for seven dollars a bag, triple-washed with who knows what. And to get...
RUDOLPH DELSON THE PROBLEM OF GOOD: WHY UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD THINGS HAPPEN TO UNCONDITIONALLY BAD PEOPLE
(SEE ...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER Brod’s life was a slow realization that the world was not for her, and that for whatever reason, s...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER I have been waiting for you for so long.”
I pointed to the car. “We are searching for Trach...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER She was with me. She did all of those things and so many more, things I would never tell anyone, and...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER Can postmodernism hold the perpetrators of genocide accountable?
CATHARINE MACKINNON Without this spirit, Modernist architecture cannot fully exist. Since there is often a mismatch betw...
TADAO ANDO She was exactly like who she said she was ... except the picture. She has very curly hair, but it wa...
KEITH MEYERSON When you add love to sex, it feels as if your soul is being drawn from the chains of gravity into th...
CHLOE THURLOW Love? I always thought love was just something that ate away your sanity, left you with an inferiori...
TOMOKO HAYAKAWA How do you love your children?
By doing what's best for them.
Then how would you love your...
J. GRANT HOWARD Without anxiety and illness I should have been like a ship without a rudder.
EDVARD MUNCH Postmodernism is among other things a sick joke at the expense of revolutionary avant-gardism.
TERRY EAGLETON What postmodernism gives us instead is a multicultural defense for male violence - a defense for it ...
CATHARINE MACKINNON Actually, we had exactly the same game plan as Saturday, except we executed better.
BOB TODD With Shakespeare, there's no subtext; you're speaking exactly what you're thinking const...
OSCAR ISAAC I'm doing exactly what I want to do, and I'm having fun doing it.
DAVID JOHANSEN It is what it is, it is what you make it.
JAMES DURBIN It's all masonry for the most part on the exterior. Modernism is taking a fresh start in Dallas, and...
DAVID FARRELL Thinking about death makes you analyse what life is. Anxiety makes you curious, and curiosity leads ...
MATT HAIG To feel alone is to be alone.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER Everyone here seems to know exactly what they need, but I leave without a thing.
KATHLEEN GLASGOW TV is an eraser.
KURT VONNEGUT Poezia s-a sinucis avînd grijă să-și facă un nod foarte estetic la ștreang.
MIRCEA CăRTăRESCU Courage is feeling justly afraid and yet still doing what is right.
SHANNON HALE The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible s...
WILFRID SELLARS FOOTBALL IS A DECISION GAME BASED ON QUICK THINKING IN RELATION TO WHAT IS HAPPENING AROUND YOU AND ...
LERCHE NJANG The opportunity to decieve others is ever present and often tempting, and each instance of deception...
SAM HARRIS The danger of civilization, of course, is that you will piss away your life on nonsense.
JIM HARRISON When you watch Robin Williams, you can see a lot of Jonathan Winters. Robin is the first one to admi...
GILBERT GOTTFRIED Post-modernism is dead because it didn't address human needs.
DAVID GUTERSON When you get to be 103, modernism is a very wide concept.
DANIEL BARENBOIM Just like those who are incurably ill, the aged know everything about their dying except exactly whe...
PHILIP ROTH Robotics is very interdisciplinary, and so, except at a very few colleges, there is not a major that...
RODNEY BROOKS What do we lose without wild animal acts at the circus? Absolutely nothing, except the opportunity t...
K. A. APPLEGATE How do you know if something is real? That’s easy. Does it change you? Does it form you? Does it g...
C. JOYBELL C. We can't just let things move and be extended without clearly understanding, between Israel and the ...
ALAN BAKER We all grew up, those of us who took On the Road to heart. We came to cringe a little at our ...
SARAH VOWELL Do what is best for you; it will be the best for the world.
DEBASISH MRIDHA God loves the plagiarist. And so it is written, 'God created humankind in His image, in the image of...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER Each of us views life through a different lens. What we think is colored by the baggage we carry, an...
LAURIE BUCHANAN, PHD I confess I take perverse delight as a theologian in the controversies surrounding postmodernism.
STANLEY HAUERWAS A meal without wine is like a day without sunshine, except that on a day without sunshine you can st...
LEE ENTREKIN Nothing except the mint can make money without advertising.
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY My old man always told me never do anything during the day that will keep you awake at night.
JONATHAN DUNNE The Great and Tragic Love of Jonathan Shadowhunter and David the Silent, by Clary Fray, Aged 1...
CASSANDRA CLARE There is great beauty in going through life without anxiety or fear. Half our fears are baseless, an...
CHRISTIAN NEVELL BOVEE I haven't changed my mind about modernism from the first day I ever did it... It means integrity...
PAUL RAND Panic---a deep abiding, free-floating anxiety, often without any reason or logical basis.
NELSON DEMILLE This is an anxiety driven world - the whole world is driven by anxiety. It is anxiety about the afte...
ROBERT J. SHILLER I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to t...
W.B. YEATS The roar of the traffic, the passage of undifferentiated
faces, this way and that way, drugs me...
VIRGINIA WOOLF The revolution is just a T-shirt away.

- Waiting for the Great Leap Forward
BILLY BRAGG He died with his tie on. Do you think that could be our generation's equivalent of that old saying a...
STEPHEN KING I would say happy new year but it's not happy; it's exactly the same as last year except colder.
ROBERT CLARK Modernism, rebelling against the ornament of the 19th century, limited the vocabulary of the designe...
EVA ZEISEL To comprehend the distaste for modernism, it must be admitted at the start that the greatest works o...
CHARLES ROSEN I regret that I wasn't more successful with my marriages, but it is what it is.
TED TURNER In the midst of the turmoil, the fear, the anxiety that's in our nation and in our world, as I was w...
ORAL ROBERTS What is sin?
It is the glory of God not honored.
The holiness of God not reverenced.
...
JOHN PIPER

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Which ever side you think i...
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JONATHAN STROUD Because you're unique . You shine like a beacon, attracting the attention of all dark things." It ch...
JONATHAN STROUD Nothing could keep me from you. Nothing in life or Death...
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JONATHAN STROUD God rest her soul and may she never walk at night
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Yet now and then your men...
JONATHAN SWIFT She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a pitch folk.
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JONATHAN RABAN But when a Man
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JONATHAN SWIFT And he gave it for his opinion, "that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, ...
JONATHAN SWIFT I warrant you lay abed till the cows came home.
JONATHAN SWIFT Faith, that's as well said as if I had said it myself.
JONATHAN SWIFT Forget regret, or life is yours to miss.
JONATHAN LARSON Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off.
JONATHAN SWIFT There's an enduring American compulsion to be on the side of the angels. Expediency alone has never ...
JONATHAN RABAN What she doesn't say is just as important as what she does say -- but there's so much more of it. I ...
JONATHAN KATZ Nor do they trust their tongue alone, but speak a language of their own; can read a nod, a shrug, a ...
JONATHAN SWIFT I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
JONATHAN SWIFT As blushing will sometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty may make a fool seem a...
JONATHAN SWIFT How we apples swim.
JONATHAN SWIFT Instead of dirt and poison, we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax, thus furnis...
JONATHAN SWIFT Convey a libel in a frown. And wink a reputation down!
JONATHAN SWIFT For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.
JONATHAN SWIFT The worthiest people are the most injured by slander, as is the best fruit which the birds have been...
JONATHAN SWIFT Modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.
JONATHAN SWIFT They say fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.
JONATHAN SWIFT What some invent the rest enlarge.
JONATHAN SWIFT