Quotes by Joshua Cohen - Page 1

Writing is a conviction before it is a craft.
Joshua Cohen /
Conviction
Craft
Copy Quote
A poem is bound by language, but a poetics is not.
Joshua Cohen /
Bound
Poem
Copy Quote
I've never enriched myself via privatization schemes in Eastern Europe.
Joshua Cohen /
Eastern
Eastern Europe
Privatization
Schemes
Enriched
Via
Copy Quote
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
Copy Quote
Novelists can ask - they can ask for anything - but their books are their answers in advance.
Joshua Cohen /
Novelists
Advance
Copy Quote
Most novelists are narcissistic egomaniacs who would probably fit somewhere on the CEO spectrum.
Joshua Cohen /
Ceo
Narcissistic
Novelists
Spectrum
Copy Quote
The problem is Jewish-American fiction that always ends with assimilation back into the community.
Joshua Cohen /
Assimilation
Copy Quote
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
Copy Quote
The Internet is a contest between people with the same name to be the person who dominates that online space.
Joshua Cohen /
Online
Contest
Copy Quote
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
Copy Quote
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
Copy Quote
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
Copy Quote
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
Copy Quote
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
Copy Quote
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
Copy Quote
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
Copy Quote
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
Copy Quote
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
Copy Quote
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
Copy Quote
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
Copy Quote
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
Copy Quote
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
Copy Quote
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
Copy Quote
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
Copy Quote
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
Copy Quote
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
Copy Quote
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
Copy Quote
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
Copy Quote
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
Copy Quote
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
Copy Quote
'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
Copy Quote
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
Copy Quote
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
Copy Quote
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
Copy Quote
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
Copy Quote
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
Copy Quote
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
Copy Quote
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
Copy Quote
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
Copy Quote
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
Copy Quote
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
Copy Quote
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
Copy Quote

Related Authors

Charles Spurgeon
Preacher
Thursday, Jun 19, 1834
Sunday, Jan 31, 1892
Carl Jung
Psychiatrist
Monday, Jul 26, 1875
Tuesday, Jun 06, 1961
H. L. Mencken
Journalist
Sunday, Sep 12, 1880
Sunday, Jan 29, 1956
Epictetus
Philosopher
Dalai Lama
Saturday, Jul 06, 1935
Robin Williams
Actor
Saturday, Jul 21, 1951
Monday, Aug 11, 2014
Soren Kierkegaard
Philosopher
Wednesday, May 05, 1813
Sunday, Nov 11, 1855
Elon Musk
Investor
Monday, Jun 28, 1971
Pope Francis
Thursday, Dec 17, 1936
Pope John Paul Ii
Priest
Tuesday, May 18, 1920
Saturday, Apr 02, 2005
Napoleon Bonaparte
Military Commander
Tuesday, Aug 15, 1769
Saturday, May 05, 1821
Muhammad Ali
Professional Boxer
Saturday, Jan 17, 1942
Friday, Jun 03, 2016
Joe Biden
Vice President Of The United States
Friday, Nov 20, 1942
Carl Sagan
Astronomer
Friday, Nov 09, 1934
Friday, Dec 20, 1996
Billy Graham
Evangelist
Thursday, Nov 07, 1918

View All Quotes

Top Authors

Paulo Coelho
Lyricist
Sunday, Aug 24, 1947
Carrie Fisher
Actress
Sunday, Oct 21, 1956
Tuesday, Dec 27, 2016
Heraclitus
Philosopher
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Carl Sagan
Astronomer
Friday, Nov 09, 1934
Friday, Dec 20, 1996
Marcus Aurelius
Roman Emperor
Saturday, Apr 26, 0121
Friday, Mar 17, 0180
Francis Of Assisi
Saint
Thursday, Jun 24, 1182
Saturday, Oct 03, 1226
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Poet
Saturday, Aug 05, 1809
Thursday, Oct 06, 1892
Walt Whitman
Poet
Monday, May 31, 1819
Saturday, Mar 26, 1892
Kim Kardashian
Television Personality
Tuesday, Oct 21, 1980
Les Brown
Author
Saturday, Feb 17, 1945
Stephen Hawking
Physicist
Thursday, Jan 08, 1942
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Essayist
Wednesday, May 25, 1803
Thursday, Apr 27, 1882
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Philosopher
Robin Williams
Actor
Saturday, Jul 21, 1951
Monday, Aug 11, 2014
Vince Lombardi
Football Player
Wednesday, Jun 11, 1913
Thursday, Sep 03, 1970

View All Authors

Joshua Cohen Quotes - Page 1

Picture Quotes Maker

Related Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page

Stay Connected

Picture Quotes Maker

Related Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page