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I always feel very afraid as I work on books. It's just so hard to write a decent book!
Jennifer Egan -
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.
Jennifer Egan
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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.
Jennifer Egan -
I blurb a lot of books by women, and I'm eager to provide encouragement and support for young women.
Jennifer Egan -
I'm not a technophobe, but I'm pretty old fashioned.
Jennifer Egan -
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.
Jennifer Egan -
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.
Jennifer Egan -
Americans are less selfish than some of our politicians believe and will respond with reason and resilience to passionate clarity.
Jennifer Egan
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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.
Jennifer Egan -
Remaining a pop phenomenon for 20 years without dying or lapsing into self-parody is quite a feat.
Jennifer Egan -
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.
Jennifer Egan -
I'm not sure if the passage of time affects our core identities so much as reveals them to us.
Jennifer Egan -
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.
Jennifer Egan -
I teach intermittently, and while I enjoy it, I don't find that it's a calling for me.
Jennifer Egan
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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.'
Jennifer Egan -
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.
Jennifer Egan -
If you don't have people that the reader cares about and stories that are gripping, you've got nothing.
Jennifer Egan -
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.
Jennifer Egan -
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.
Jennifer Egan -
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.
Jennifer Egan
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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.
Jennifer Egan -
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.
Jennifer Egan -
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.
Jennifer Egan -
I am at my worst trying to write about things that overlap with my life.
Jennifer Egan