Jennifer Egan Quotes
One area I have a huge amount of trouble in is writing about myself. I get a heavy, almost depressed feeling.
Quotes to Explore
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All autobiography is storytelling; all writing is autobiography.
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I must've been a bird in some previous lifetime. I feel like I'm called to flying - the convenience and the beauty of it. That feeling of soaring would be empowering.
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The markets are much more interested in America's long-term trajectory than they are in feeling that there is an acute short-term crisis.
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I am just doing photo shoots. It's not something that extraordinary. I'm not a great artist, I'm not writing books, I'm not a painter, and people in the streets ask me for a picture or a note, and I say, 'Why?'
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I have to write what I can write, and writing the text of a picture book is like walking a tightrope, if you ramble off... As my friend Julius Lester says, 'A picture book is the essence of an experience.'
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There is nothing cooler than to have them singing your words back to you. The last show I did, I was kind of nervous about putting the mic out there, because you're not sure how it's going to go. But I did, and they sang the whole chorus. I thought, 'Holy crap! That is the coolest feeling.' It's the biggest rush ever.
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I've been writing for a long time. I sat down to write my first novel in the middle of March of 1982.
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When you're writing, you are robbed of your delivery.
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I am a great procrastinator. When the writing is going really well, the laundry piles up.
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It's kind of a catch-22 now because since the 'Da Vinci Code,' I have access to places and people that I didn't have access to before, so that's a lot of fun for somebody like me, but I'm always trying to keep a secret. I don't want people to know what I'm writing about.
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As a storyteller, when you're writing a movie and when you're directing, you want to keep people entertained. That's the whole point, right? It has to be entertaining.
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I always used to deny this, but I guess what I'm really saying is that I was writing to shock... And I dug deep and dredged up all kinds of vile things which fascinated me at the time.
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When I'm writing books, something weird happens; and the result is the books contain a large amount of what you could call 'supernaturalism.' As a writer, I find I need that to explain the world I'm writing about.
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I had reached a point in my career in which I was ready to try something new in my writing, and the idea of a novel has always been in the back of my mind.
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Self-respect: the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.
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'Deacon Blues' was special for me. It's the only time I remember mixing a record all day and, when the mix was done, feeling like I wanted to hear it over and over again. It was the comprehensive sound of the thing: the song itself, its character, the way the instruments sounded, and the way Tom Scott's tight horn arrangement fit in.
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The best part about being married is feeling centered. Nothing else matters so much as long as you can come home and be with your family.
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Nobody's going to write a book about me, because nobody's going to find anything worth writing a book about.
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I suspect that writer's block afflicts mainly people who have some stable and ample source of income outside of writing. So far it hasn't been a problem.
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Good science is all about following the data as it shows up and letting yourself be proven wrong, and letting everything change while you're working on it - and I think writing is the same way.
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Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.
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If one wanted to find a modern symbol of personal freedom, the motor car is right there near the top of the list. But a car has come to mean much more than that. It has become a powerful statement about who you are and how much you earn.
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When you give up a bit of work don't (unless it is hopelessly bad) throw it away. Put it in a drawer. It may come in useful later. Much of my best work, or what I think my best, is the re-writing of things begun and abandoned years earlier.
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One area I have a huge amount of trouble in is writing about myself. I get a heavy, almost depressed feeling.
