Quotes by Joshua Cohen - Page 1

Writing is a conviction before it is a craft.
Joshua Cohen /
Conviction
Craft
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A poem is bound by language, but a poetics is not.
Joshua Cohen /
Bound
Poem
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I've never enriched myself via privatization schemes in Eastern Europe.
Joshua Cohen /
Eastern
Eastern Europe
Privatization
Schemes
Enriched
Via
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You know you're a fool when what you're doing makes even the post office seem efficient.
Joshua Cohen /
Efficient
Fool
Post Office
Post
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Novelists can ask - they can ask for anything - but their books are their answers in advance.
Joshua Cohen /
Novelists
Advance
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Most novelists are narcissistic egomaniacs who would probably fit somewhere on the CEO spectrum.
Joshua Cohen /
Ceo
Narcissistic
Novelists
Spectrum
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The problem is Jewish-American fiction that always ends with assimilation back into the community.
Joshua Cohen /
Assimilation
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The M.F.A. is a degree in servitude. It is a way to keep writing safe - to keep reading safe from writing.
Joshua Cohen /
Servitude
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The Internet is a contest between people with the same name to be the person who dominates that online space.
Joshua Cohen /
Online
Contest
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Each and every novel is a world outside the world - for a reader to visit, for comfort, consolation, escape, or challenge.
Joshua Cohen /
Comfort
Consolation
Reader
Escape
Visit
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You write a novel by inventing a world and inventing the rules that govern that world. Then you break the rules when you want to.
Joshua Cohen /
Inventing
Govern
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The Internet makes the writer work harder - I have to say things here I've never said before, or else be caught out in repeating myself.
Joshua Cohen /
Caught
Repeating
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The big publishers want someone they can send on the Jewish book circuit, somebody the old ladies can see marrying their granddaughters.
Joshua Cohen /
Granddaughter
Marrying
Publishers
Jewish
Circuit
Ladies
Send
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I think if German literature could survive the '40s and Russian literature could survive Sovietism, American literature can survive Google.
Joshua Cohen /
American Literature
German
Survive
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The Muslim heaven features prominently in the Quran, Arabic poetries and Hadith. The Jewish heaven, though, is still a mystery; it's mystic.
Joshua Cohen /
Features
Heaven
Mystic
Jewish
Arabic
Muslim
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The Internet is a tool, a technology, and we like to say that it has all of these properties, but really, it's just a place where our writing is.
Joshua Cohen /
Properties
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There are so many classic Big Brother warning books: the Internet is a horrible, controlling thing, as if it has a consciousness or political agenda.
Joshua Cohen /
Classic
Consciousness
Horrible
Warning
Big Brother
Political Agenda
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English, unlike Hebrew, is read from left to right - as are clocks. The concepts of clockwise and counterclockwise are universal, irrespective of alphabet.
Joshua Cohen /
Alphabet
Concepts
Hebrew
Clocks
Unlike
Irrespective
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The larger your audience, the smaller your vocabulary and range of referents - the fewer your means of expression. You can't rely on the luxury of intimacy.
Joshua Cohen /
Fewer
Intimacy
Luxury
Range
Rely
Vocabulary
Larger
Smaller
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A writer appears in everything that he does. That said, I felt like writing characters with my own name, in fact, provided me with something of a smoke screen.
Joshua Cohen /
Smoke
Appears
Provided
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E-books, which made their debut in the 1990s, cut costs even more for both consumer and producer, though as the Internet expanded, those roles became confused.
Joshua Cohen /
Confused
Debut
Internet
Roles
Became
Consumer
Cut
Producer
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The Jewish calendar, which is lunar, is a calendar of witness. The Sanhedrin, Jewry's Congress, met in Jerusalem toward the end of every month to wait for the new moon.
Joshua Cohen /
Jerusalem
Witness
Jewish
Month
Calendar
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I have a credit card and a phone. I answer emails; I answer questions on chat in the middle of the day. Then, late at night, I write against other people who do just that.
Joshua Cohen /
Credit
Credit Card
Day Night People
Card
Chat
Night Day People
Emails
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In mid-20th-century America, it could be argued that the novelist still had the most claim of anyone to omniscience. Whatever he/she couldn't prove, he/she could gesture at.
Joshua Cohen /
Prove
Argued
Claim
Gesture
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Metaphors, similes, puns - all manner of metonymy - I'm interested in language that cannot be parsed by a machine - language that can only be understood through acculturation.
Joshua Cohen /
Understood
Manner
Metaphors
Puns
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Taking trains and trams in Berlin, I noticed people reading. Books, I mean - not pocket-size devices that bleep as if censorious, on which even Shakespeare scans like a spreadsheet.
Joshua Cohen /
Berlin
Devices
Reading Books
Trains
Noticed
Shakespeare
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I think that technology is essentially a continuation of a divestment of theological power that's been happening since The Enlightenment. It's the idea that God can see and hear everything.
Joshua Cohen /
Continuation
Enlightenment
Theological
Essentially
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I've never been able to shake the idea of family, which is to say I've never been able to shake my family. Being membered - being one limb of an immense grosser body - that's always been a fact to me.
Joshua Cohen /
Immense
Limb
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In Robert Louis Stevenson's 'Jekyll & Hyde,' the hero decides on the terms of his transformation in a process that's explained not through the supernatural but the natural or, at least, through biochemistry.
Joshua Cohen /
Biochemistry
Hero
Hyde
Transformation
Louis
Explained
Robert
Stevenson
Supernatural
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All of business and all of politics is essentially fiction to those who live them. I have more experience with fiction than most senators because I do it all day, so their world didn't seem that foreign to me.
Joshua Cohen /
Senators
All Day
Essentially
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'Religion,' I should note, has a disputed etymology in Latin: some say it's from 'relegere,' meaning 'to reread', while others say it's from religare, meaning 'to connect' or 'link.' Literature is life's fastener.
Joshua Cohen /
Latin
Connect
Disputed
Link
Note
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I've always been discreet - more than discreet. When a friend calls, and I'm doing something innocuous like cooking dinner, I tell them I'm reading or running out to the movies. It's the surveillance I can't stand.
Joshua Cohen /
Cooking
Dinner
Discreet
Surveillance
Calls
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To outsource your memory to machines - which is what many of us do with regard to our use of search engines - seems to me to be fairly antithetical to the basic qualities of Jewish life that have kept the Jews alive for so long.
Joshua Cohen /
Engines
Machines
Regard
Jewish
Fairly
Life Long Your
Life Memory Me
Jews
Outsource
Qualities
Search
Search Engines
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I don't think any book of mine will ever come as close to pure fantasy as 'A Heaven of Others.' I'll never again set a book in a world or after-world in which it's impossible to buy a cup of coffee or take an undisturbed afternoon nap.
Joshua Cohen /
Afternoon
Coffee
Fantasy
Heaven
Pure
Nap
Cup
Undisturbed
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I first read Dostoyevsky when I was 14 years old and was entranced. Dostoyevsky truly is a writer for 14-year-olds, and I mean that in the most approving way - approving of his energy, and rage, his endless pessimism, and endless innocence.
Joshua Cohen /
Approving
Innocence
Pessimism
Entranced
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I don't like being victimized by a machine or by other people's demands on my time. I become resentful by feeling forced or incentivized to live a life I don't want to live. That rage in general prevents me from entirely becoming enslaved by technology.
Joshua Cohen /
My Time
Resentful
Life Time Technology
Enslaved
Entirely
Forced
Prevents
Victimized
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What qualified me to write about Israel was that I wanted to; it took no time to convince myself. The only reservation I had was about eaven: I wanted to write about the Jewish heaven but did not feel qualified because I did not and do not believe in 'it,' though I should.
Joshua Cohen /
Convince
Heaven
Qualified
Jewish
Time Myself Believe
No Time
Reservation
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I do think that once you remove the limitations of the page, once you turn text transitive, meaning it can be clicked away from, the forward movement of text can be interrupted. But I don't think this is just a function of technology. It's also a function of cultural preference.
Joshua Cohen /
Function
Interrupted
Preference
Remove
Clicked
Cultural
Limitations
Page
Text
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The birth of the search engine, it's nothing new: it's essentially embedded in our literature; it's how ideas relate, how the mind makes connections. I mean, connections are made online through links, and within an algorithm, they're made through degrees of relevancy between different terms.
Joshua Cohen /
Birth
Connections
Degrees
Embedded
Links
Nothing New
Online
Relate
Search Engine
Algorithm
Engine
Essentially
Search
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When knowledge no longer becomes the commodity of the few, but in a sense becomes equalized by everyone having access, you lose some aspect of Jewish particularity, or at least a Jewish particularity that is fundamental to the construct of Jews as people of the book, which was always interesting.
Joshua Cohen /
Aspect
Commodity
Jewish
Construct
Fundamental
Jews
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Without computers, in the 17th century, we could classify the entire animal kingdom... there was this idea of the speciation, right? And now, all a search engine is is essentially the mathematical speciation of ideas - and these things really derive from the way that language is used and the way words relate.
Joshua Cohen /
Computers
Animal
Mathematical
Relate
Search Engine
Classify
Derive
Engine
Search
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Say you're an American novelist, published by the largest publishing house in the world. Their goal is to make as much money from you as possible, to have as many people read your book in as many formats as possible. How can you hope to speak intimately to the numbers of people that represent the book sales required?
Joshua Cohen /
Numbers
Publishing House
As Much Money
Represent
Formats
Largest
Published
Required
Sales
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Joshua Cohen Quotes - Page 1

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