Jennifer Egan Quotes
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When I'm not writing, I feel an awareness that something's missing. If I go a long time, it becomes worse. I become depressed. There's something vital that's not happening.
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'Look at Me' started with Rockford, Illinois and New York and the question of how much image culture was changing our inner lives. That's an abstract idea; you don't think that's going to be a rocking work of fiction, but it seemed to fuse in a way that was interesting.
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I grew up in the 1970s, and my friends and I felt very keenly that we had missed the '60s. We were bummed out about it.
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I felt more doubtful than usual with 'Goon Squad,' because I knew that the book's genre wasn't easily named - Novel? Stories? Novel-in-stories? - and I worried that its lack of a clear category would count against it. My hopes for it were pretty modest.
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I haven't read a lot of science fiction, and I never intend to write it; it seems to happen a little bit inadvertently for me, in that I'm trying to follow people into points in their lives that demand that I investigate the future.
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I've tried writing on a computer thinking it would make me more efficient, but if you're writing crummy stuff, being efficient is no help.
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Invention and memory are so close together in the place they occupy in my brain.
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As a reader and a writer, I'm happiest when apparently mutually exclusive states can somehow coexist.
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I haven't had trouble with writer's block. I think it's because my process involves writing very badly. My first drafts are filled with lurching, cliched writing, outright flailing around. Writing that doesn't have a good voice or any voice. But then there will be good moments.
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I write to escape from my life. Writing about men separates 'me' from my work in a way that I find comforting.
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One futuristic novel that had a huge impact on me was Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein,' which is kind of science fiction plus Gothic.
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I love the thriller genre generally. I like murder mysteries and those kinds of adventure stories.
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It seemed impossible that a scrappy book like 'Goon Squad' could win an award like that. It's such an iconic honor. I think what the Pulitzer means to me is that I'll need to work very, very hard to try to live up to it.
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What lists and awards don't measure - and I feel this strongly - is the lasting value of any work of art. They're a snapshot of a moment, and one should always consider their judgments in that context.
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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.
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My first attempt at writing a novel was horrible. I had to throw it away. But I stuck with the idea, which is what became 'The Invisible Circus.'
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Between books, I have to throw out everything I did before, because the tools I've used to write the previous book will not only not work for the next project, they will ruin it.
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I was on a very bumpy plane ride, an overnight flight. I was so miserable, and I pulled out 'David Copperfield,' and I forgot how scared and tired I was, and I thought, 'This is what reading should be.' I'm utterly transported out of my current situation.
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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.
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Reading is a lot like eating for me: If I try to read a book I'm not hungry for, I won't enjoy it, but if I wait until I have a real appetite for something, I'll devour it.
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I think, for one thing, all of us remember those teenage years and those songs that we fell in love with and the music scene that we were part of. So, in a certain way, music cuts through time like almost nothing else. You know, it makes us feel like we're back in an earlier moment.
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If having a story that's compelling - you want to know what will happen - is traditional, then ultimately I am a traditionalist. That is what readers care about. It's what I care about as a reader. Now if I can have that along with a strong girding of ideas and some kind of exciting technical forays - then that is just the jackpot.
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I learned you have to move fast, writing futuristic satire in America: Before you know it, you're a realist!
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Americans are less selfish than some of our politicians believe and will respond with reason and resilience to passionate clarity.