Jennifer Egan Quotes

I was a stepchild in two different families. The hardest thing about being a stepchild is you know that in some way everything would be easier if you didnt exist.

If I had a view like this to look down on every day, I would have the energy and inspiration to conquer the world. The trouble is, when you most need such a view, no one gives it to you.

Read at the level at which you want to write. Reading is the nourishment that feeds the kind of writing you want to do.

Goon Squad' took about three years to write and that's the short end. My second novel, 'Look at Me,' took six years.

I don’t want to fade away, I want to flame away - I want my death to be an attraction, a spectacle, a mystery. A work of art.

Because you can't write habitually and well all the time, you have to be willing to write badly. That's how you get the regularity that enables you to be present for the good stuff.

Reading is the nourishment that lets you do interesting work.

I'm always happy," Sasha said. "Sometimes I just forget.

The answers were maddeningly absent—it was like trying to remember a song that you knew made you feel a certain way, without a title, artist, or even a few bars to bring it back.

Vinegar: that's what fear smells like.

I think ethical ambivalence is a kind of innoculation, a way of excusing yourself in advance for something you actually want to do. No offense.

Her only thought was of getting away, as if she were carrying a live grenade from inside the house, so that when it exploded, it would destroy just herself.

There are so many ways to go wrong. All we've got are metaphors, and they're never exactly right. You can never just Say. The. Thing.

We lie. That's what we do. You're selling me a line of bullshit and you want me to sell you a line of bullshit back so you can write a major line of bullshit and be paid for it.

Sometimes I imagine myself looking back on right now and I think like where will I be standing when I look back Will right now look like the beginning of a great life or... or what

Sure, everything is ending," Jules said, "but not yet.

Technology makes everyone feel old. A laptop is old after two years. Someone always has something newer. Everyone seems to feel obsolete now, even the young.

Structural dissatisfaction: Returning to circumstances that once pleased you, after having experienced a more thrilling or opulent way of life, and finding that you can no longer tolerate them.

The music industry is an interesting lens through which to look at change, because it has had such a difficult time adjusting to the digital age.

I haven't had writer's block. I think it's because my process involves writing very badly.

I’m sorry and I believe in you and I’ll always be near you, protecting you, and I will never leave you, I’ll be curled around your heart for the rest of your life.

The world is full of shitheads, Rhea. Don’t listen to them—listen to me. And I know that Lou is one of those shitheads. But I listen.

The problem was precision, perfection; the problem was digitization, which sucked the life out of everything that got smeared through its microscopic mesh.

Rich children are always blond, Jocelyn goes. It has to do with vitamins.

She'd risked everything, and here was the result: the raw, warped core of her life.

When does a fake Mohawk become a real Mohawk? Who decides? How do you know if it's happened?

It was the hat. He looked sweet in the hat. How could a man in a fuzzy blue hat have used human bones to pave his roads?

I can't tell if she's actually real, or if she's stopped caring if she's real or not. Or is not caring what makes a person real?

It's finished. Everything went past, without me.

This is the music business. 'Five years is five hundred years' - your words.

Kathy was a Republican, one of those people who used the unforgivable phrase "meant to be"--usually when describing her own good fortune or the disasters that had befallen other people.

Time’s a goon, right? You gonna let that goon push you around?” Scotty shook his head. “The goon won.

"See," Sasha muttered, eyeing the sun. 'It's mine."

I know I'm famous and irresitible - a combination whose properties closely resemble radioactivity - and I know that you in this room are helpless against me.

And Alex understood that Scotty Hausmann did not exist. He was a word casing in human form: a shell whose essence has vanished.

I’m like America ” he said. Stephanie swung around to look at him unnerved. “What are you talking about ” she said. “Are you off your meds ” “Our hands are dirty ” Jules said.

He looks tired, like someone walked on his skin and left footprints.

a swell of gratitude and appreciation for his assistant, as opposed to the murderous rage he felt toward the rest of his staff

What I Suddenly Understand My job is to make people uncomfortable. + I will do it all my life. ---> My mother, Sasha Blake, is my first victim.

Kissing Mother Superior, incompetent, hairball, poppy seeds, on the can.

Too clear, too clean. The problem was precision, perfection.

But it was another girl, young and new to the city, fiddling with her keys.

some mornings... I sit at the kitchen table shaking salt into the hairs on my arm, and a feeling shoves up in me: it's finished. Everything went past without me.

Now that Scotty has entered the realm of myth, everyone wants to own him. And maybe they should. Doesn't a myth belong to everyone?

if thr r childrn thr mst be a fUtr rt?

Oh we'll know each other forever, Bix says. The days of losing touch are almost gone.

reach isn’t describable in terms of cause and effect anymore: it’s simultaneous.

What he needed was to find fifty more people like him, who had stopped being themselves without realizing it.

th blu nyt th stRs u can't c th hum tht nevr gOs awy

I think, The world is actually huge. That's the part no one can really explain.