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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.
Jennifer Egan -
As a journalist, I have wanted very much to find a way to write about the music industry, and it's been frustrating to me that that's never worked out.
Jennifer Egan
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I love the thriller genre generally. I like murder mysteries and those kinds of adventure stories.
Jennifer Egan -
I loved every minute of my childhood - sunbathing on the fire escape, digging for buried treasure in the back yard, pulling alewives out of the sand... Then it was all taken away from me. I came back every summer to visit my father until I was 18, but I was always the outsider.
Jennifer Egan -
I guess my comfort zone as a writer is diametrically opposed to my comfort zone as a human being.
Jennifer Egan -
I think literary theory satisfied a deep love I have for big, encompassing narratives about the world and how it works - which are usually, in the end, more creative visions unto themselves than illuminating explanations.
Jennifer Egan -
I'm a dogged person. I respond to adversity with a steely resistance.
Jennifer Egan -
I write to escape from my life. Writing about men separates 'me' from my work in a way that I find comforting.
Jennifer Egan
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Both my own process and that of the publishing industry are just too slow to do anything other than play catch-up when it comes to anticipating change.
Jennifer Egan -
I have this dream again and again: I find extra rooms in the place where I live. You could say it's a very New York dream, but I think it's about writing - the feeling that there is something behind a wall or a door.
Jennifer Egan -
I wasn't a kid who wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a doctor. I was kind of morbid. I was really into the body and how it could go wrong. I wanted to dig up bodies from the graveyard.
Jennifer Egan -
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.'
Jennifer Egan -
I grew up as a step-kid, always a little outside, always trying hard to follow and fit in. But over time, I've come to feel that my tendency toward self-erasure is a deep and real part of me. I think I'd be this way no matter how I grew up.
Jennifer Egan -
In the case of 'Goon Squad,' which sold slowly for a long time despite the good reviews, those 'best of 2010' lists were pivotal, and made the book really sell.
Jennifer Egan
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You can research until you're falling asleep, but that still doesn't mean you're really fluent in the material.
Jennifer Egan -
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.
Jennifer Egan -
I just think that, for my particular personality, feeling slightly invisible is always a help.
Jennifer Egan -
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.
Jennifer Egan -
If you've been around as long as I have, watching the literary scene, then you know that who's in and who's out changes by the year. It's really a very fluid situation that requires that the person who is having the good luck now isn't having it a year or two from now.
Jennifer Egan -
When I pick up a book that's, you know, wreathed in laurels, I expect a lot, and that doesn't give the book its best chance to shine.
Jennifer Egan
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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.
Jennifer Egan -
I would go so far as to say that I mostly write terrible things. I mean, my first drafts are so appalling.
Jennifer Egan -
When I think about a book like 'A Clockwork Orange,' which I really loved, the weird hybrid language is what I remember most.
Jennifer Egan -
Life itself is so surprising, a predictable story is unsatisfying.
Jennifer Egan