Jay McInerney Quotes
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I envy those writers who outline their novels, who know where they're going. But I find writing is a process of discovery.
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We've been hearing about the death of the novel ever since the day after Don Quixote was published.
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I feel that there's a lot of would-be guardians of the culture who think that high-minded literary purpose and the life that gets chronicled in the gossip columns, that these two things are incompatible.
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'Socialist' is the nastiest thing you can say about an American politician in some quarters.
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You know, Greenwich Village was the traditional bohemia of New York. I wish I could say that was entirely true now. It's, uh... changed. It's now got, God help us, investment bankers and journalists, but it's still a very beautiful part of New York.
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I love to imagine inside the head of a woman.
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Yeah, 'Gossip Girl' is a good show. It's a real New York show, like 'Sex and the City.'
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Love is the eternal quest: almost everyone wants to love and be loved.
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I've been interested in writing and storytelling since I learned to read, but it wasn't until I read Dylan Thomas, when I was 14, that I became interested in language itself, and saw it as more than a transparent medium for a story.
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I'm afraid that - not necessarily deliberately, but consistently - I've made a kind of laboratory out of my life, where I mix the stuff in the test tubes to create explosions - possibly resulting in interesting by-products. I mean, not deliberately - I'd be crazy to deliberately do that - or maybe not.
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Publishers send me a lot of first novels because my first novel was the defining novel of my career, and I guess a lot of people want my benediction or something.
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A creative writing program is only as good as its teachers, and I was fortunate in having two great writers as mentors.
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If being a spokesman for a generation is a fleeting occupation, being a symbol of an era is downright dangerous for anyone who has the bad luck to outlive it.
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Most of the people I write about have been ambitious outlanders who have been attracted to New York from other parts of the world.
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The definition of gumbo is almost as slippery as that of Creole. Just as gumbo can contain pretty much any kind of meat or seafood, Creole is a vague and inclusive term for native New Orleanians, who may be black or white, depending on whom you're asking.
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I like the fact that I'm living in the world rather than in a university.
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There's a socialist bias to the consensus of the literary world: a '30s mentality that says factory workers are more worthy of our attention.
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You are a republic of voices tonight. Unfortunately, that republic is Italy.
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My former wife is a very eccentric woman, which is why I still love her.
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I'm a romantic; you have to be to marry four times.
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I don't want to have my life fall apart for my work.
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I always hope people will like me, and I'm always afraid they will think I'm a fraud. I try harder than perhaps I should to make people like me, then it backfires. They think I'm a buffoon.
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Sometimes I think everything I touch turns into a Page Six item.
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Most novelists I know went through a period of intense self-examination and self-loathing after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. I certainly did.