Jonathan Dee (born 1962) is an American novelist and non-fiction writer. His fifth novel, "The Privileges", was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Read full biography of Jonathan Dee →
I seem to have a talent for writing endings that seem just right to me but that frustrate other people.
I think that good storytelling of any kind does promote a humility in that it encourages you to see the world the way that other people see it.
Don't get me wrong: I can and do waste time on the Internet with the best of them, but in some respects, I am an embarrassingly analog guy. I am... →
I have no desire to write historical anything or futuristic anything - I want to find a way to get at the essence of what it's like to be alive... →
In order to describe a particular subculture, you might want to portray people who are typical or representative of that subculture; but to dramatize... →
I personally feel I still have so much to learn as a writer; each novel is better than the one before, just because I'm getting better at it.
Kenneth Branagh. There was a time in my life when people would tell me constantly that I look like him. I could do a lot worse than that.
More than periods where I don't write anything, I have periods where I just write junk and I know I'm writing junk but I can't stop.
New York is ultimately not the synthesis but merely the sum of its unfathomable subjectivities, its personal histories, its uncategorisable figures.
Novels are a kind of experiment in selfhood, for the reader as well as for the author.
The first draft often is really fast, and I'd be terribly ashamed if anybody ever saw it.
What could be more boring than a novel that tells you how to think about everything that happens in it?
You never want to have to give your child bad news of any kind.