Jennifer Egan Quotes
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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.
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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.
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There's something very strange about associating me with that prize. I had hoped for it in a more directed way as a journalist. Somehow as a journalist you know there are Pulitzers out there and you can work hard and get one. To win it for Fiction seems unbelievable.
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I blurb a lot of books by women, and I'm eager to provide encouragement and support for young women.
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If you don't have people that the reader cares about and stories that are gripping, you've got nothing.
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I would go so far as to say that I mostly write terrible things. I mean, my first drafts are so appalling.
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I can't even imagine writing nonfiction by hand. I think if I didn't have a computer, I just couldn't do it. Maybe it's a brain-section issue.
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I was a stepchild in two different families. The hardest thing about being a stepchild is you know that in some way everything would be easier if you didn't exist.
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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'm not sure if the passage of time affects our core identities so much as reveals them to us.
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If I'm doing something I know I can pull off, then that's not the book I should be writing.
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Remaining a pop phenomenon for 20 years without dying or lapsing into self-parody is quite a feat.
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The way that Dickens structured his books has a form that we most readily recognize now from, say, the great T.V. series, like 'The Wire' or 'The Sopranos.' There's one central plot line, but then from that spin off all kinds of subplots.
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In terms of rock and roll, I'm often drawn to louder, rougher stuff; maybe that's my history as a punk rock wannabee showing itself! Honestly, though, I'm not one of those people who listens to music constantly. I really love silence.
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I'm not a wildly gifted person; I don't play an instrument or speak another language or have great accomplishments in another field, as many writers do. But writing feels natural to me; the act of it seems to free up my unconscious, so that sometimes I feel that I have access to more ideas and information than my conscious mind could think up.
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My last novel, 'The Keep,' was very explicitly technological, about the quality of living in a state constantly surrounded by disembodied presences, and I was thinking very much about the online experience.
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My mom used to say that if someone woke her up in the middle of the night and asked how old she was, she'd answer 27. Hearing her, I'd think, 'That's ridiculous; your job as my mom is to be old.'
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People define themselves to some degree by the music that they listened to as teens. My mom had Elvis. Me, I had 'The Who' and later punk rock. Kids who came up in the '80s had other songs and bands. It's a way of placing ourselves culturally and temporally.
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I try consciously to keep myself entertained and challenged to not repeat myself at all. Like, when I start a new book, my goal is to pretty much throw out what I've done and try something completely different that I think initially I cannot do.
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I teach intermittently, and while I enjoy it, I don't find that it's a calling for me.
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Fiction is my deepest love, but I love journalism, too. It keeps me thinking vigorously, and it reminds me that there is a world out there.
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Comparison is painful. Don't be cowed by other people's pretty pictures. When you feel unimpressive, or irrelevant, that has nothing to do with what you're actually capable of.
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I hope to keep writing journalism as long as I write fiction; it's afforded me such amazing adventures and opportunities. It does take a lot of time, so it's hard to do both at once, but I try to do a big journalism piece every couple of years, and I'll hopefully continue with that.
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I have a hatred of familiarity. If I feel like I am doing something I've done before, it feels old and done. I feel I have no choice but to strike out in directions that feel new - anything less just doesn't seem worth it.