Jonathan Cott Quotes

“There's a theme that appears in much of your work," I say to Maurice on my last visit to Connecticut, "and I can only hint at it because it's difficult to formulate or describe. It has something to do with the lines: 'As I went over the water/the water went over me' [from As I Went over the Water] or 'I'm in the milk and the milk's in me' [from Night Kitchen].""Obviously I have one theme, and it's even in the book I'm working on right now. It's not that I have such original ideas, just that I'm good at doing variations on the same idea over and over again. You can't imagine how relieved I was to find out that Henry James admitted he had only a couple of themes and that all of his books were based on them. That's all we need as artists - one power-driven fantasy or obsession, then to be clever enough to do variations… like a series of variations by Mozart. They're so good that you forget they're based on one theme. The same things draw me, the same images…""What is this one obsession?""I'm not about to tell you - not because it's a secret, but because I can't verbalize it.""There's a line by Bob Dylan in 'Just Like a Woman' which talks about being 'inside the rain.'""Inside the rain?""When it's raining outside," I explain, "I often feel inside myself, as if I were inside the rain… as if the rain were my self. That's the sense I get from Dylan's image and from your books as well.""It's strange you say that," Maurice answers, "because rain has become one of the potent images of my new book. It sort of scares me that you mentioned that line. Maybe that's what rain means. It's such an important ingredient in this new work, and I've never understood what it meant. There was a thing about me and rain when I was a child: if I could summon it up in one sentence, I'd be happy to. It's such connected tissue…”

“So you have to be humble in dealing with the spaces and make sure they are used according to their unique purpose for which there is no alternative...art, if you like, is really a lack of alternatives."-Jonathan Meese”

“I have schizophrenia. I am not schizophrenia. I am not my mental illness. My illness is a part of me.”

“How simple it is to acknowledge that all the worry in the world could not control the future. How simple it is to see that we can only be happy now, and that there will never be a time when it is not now.”

“You’ve got to reach bedrock to become depressed enough before you are forced to accept the reality and enormity of the problem.”

“Jonathan Seagull discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the reasons that a gull's life is so short, and with those gone from his thought, he lived a long fine life indeed.”

“A moment later Jonathan’s body wavered in the air, shimmering, and began to go transparent. “Don’t let them spread silly rumors about me, or make me a god. O.K., Fletch? I’m a seagull. I like to fly, maybe…”

“You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that you touch perfect speed. And that isn’t flying a thousand miles an hour, or a million, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn’t have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being there.”

“I have no cause to love Mr. Norrell- far from it. But I know this about him: he is a magician first and everything else second- and Jonathan is the same. Books and magic are all either of them really care about.”

“I've lived my life fighting to overcome but still yet the troubles I face, may never end in this endless race.”