Jennifer Egan Quotes

If you don't have people that the reader cares about and stories that are gripping, you've got nothing.

I had this idea that I could hire myself out as a person to go on archeological digs and dig, without any training! I actually wrote to a number of archeology departments and offered up my services.

I listened to classic rock and roll, and punk rock. 'Goon Squad' provides a pretty accurate playlist of my teenage years, though it leaves out 'The Who,' which was my absolute favorite band.

[I]t may be that a crowd at a particular moment of history creates the object to justify its gathering.

I am at my worst trying to write about things that overlap with my life.

And the question is, which one is really "you.

That we have some history together that hasn’t happened yet.

There's a fine line between thinking about somebody and thinking about not thinking about somebody, but I have the patience and the self-control to walk that line for hours - days, if I have to.

Everybody sounds stoned, because they're e-mailing people the whole time they're talking to you.

No one is waiting for me. In this story, I'm the girl no one is waiting for.

Americans are less selfish than some of our politicians believe and will respond with reason and resilience to passionate clarity.

They were snobs or idiots or both...yet she was inexplicably crushed by their coldness.

That adage about 'Write what you know' is basically the opposite of the way I function. I write about what I'm curious to find out.

The bottom line is that I like my first drafts to be blind, unconscious, messy efforts; that's what gets me the best material.

Redemption, transformation--God how she wanted these things. Every day, every minute. Didn't everyone?

Be willing and unafraid to write badly, because often the bad stuff...forms a base on which to build something better.

It's turning out to be a bad day, a day when the sun feels like teeth.

We live in a moment and a culture when reading is really endangered. There's simply no way to write well, though, if you're not reading well.

So I feel that lack of qualification. And I'm scared. And I have a tendency to think things may not/probably won't work out. That's my basic mindset.

Everyone we've lost, we'll find. Or they'll find us.

She looks like someone I want to know, or maybe even be.

I guess it's always romantic when two people fall in love.... Even if it turns out not to be real.

Real computers scared me; if you can find Them, then They can find you.

I've never been that confident. I don't tend to think, swaggeringly, I'm going to ace this. It's just not who I am.

I think the one thing that's changed over time is that I've come to realise, as a fiction writer, the fact that I don't think it will work out, doesn't mean that it actually won't.

I don't really know where my ideas come from. I start with a time and a place. That's what I need to get started, and an intellectual question.

I'm a dogged person. I respond to adversity with a steely resistance.

One area I have a huge amount of trouble in is writing about myself. I get a heavy, almost depressed feeling.

...water laughing softly down a black stone wall.

...our familiar features rinsed in weird adulthood.

That's what death is, Danny thought: wanting to talk to someone and not being able to.

I guess it’s always romantic when two people fall in love.... Even if it turns out not to be real.

A frenzy of activity that had mostly led him in circles: wasn't that a fairly accurate description of lust?

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

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

But Phoebe loved her mother best as she was now, wistful, out-of-step, her laugh tinged always with sadness, as if things were only funny in spite of themselves.

You can do it alone. But it's going to be so much harder.

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

So this is it ⎯ what cost me all that time. A man who turned out to be old, a house that turned out to be empty.

Soiled, forgotten coats of arms were carved above their massive doorways, and these unsettled Ted: such universal, defining symbols made meaningless by nothing more than time.

Time's a goon right? Isn't that the expression?

I don't know what happened to me, " he said, shaking his head. "I honestly don't." ... "You grew up, Alex.

You can only write regularly if you’re willing to write badly… Accept bad writing as a way of priming the pump, a warm-up exercise that allows you to write well.