If you can write any way and it's working out, just bow down in gratitude. — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
We live in a moment and a culture when reading is really endangered. There's simply no way to write well, though, if… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
There are so many ways to go wrong. All we've got are metaphors, and they're never exactly right. You can never just… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
A sense of that kind of narrative movement that we experience online could have been in my mind easily, though not consciously.… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
I often felt like that Mr. Magoo figure in the cartoon, who just wanders through traffic, and somehow it never hits him.… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
People define themselves to some degree by the music that they listened to as teens. My mom had Elvis. Me, I had… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
I think, for one thing, all of us remember those teenage years and those songs that we fell in love with and… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
I was a stepchild in two different families. The hardest thing about being a stepchild is you know that in some way… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
I grew up as a step-kid, always a little outside, always trying hard to follow and fit in. But over time, I've… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
In a way, I'm always trying to do something I'm not qualified to do. So I feel that lack of qualification. And… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
I'm not reading what I write when I wrote. It's an unconscious outpouring that's a mess, and it's many, many steps away… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
A bit of theory as we settle down for lunch: the waiter's treatment of Kitty is actually a kind of sandwich, with… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
Rebecca was an academic star. Her new book was on the phenomenon of word casings, a term she'd invented for words that… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
The book that is the closest genetically to 'Goon Squad' is 'Look at Me.' It has the futuristic element - although, freakishly,… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
When the clock stops on a life, all things emanating from it become precious, finite, and cordoned off for preservation. Each aspect… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
I write my first draft by hand, at least for fiction. For non-fiction, I write happily on a computer, but for fiction… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
I'm very interested in the way the Internet has changed teenage life. Obviously it's very different from when I grew up, when… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
Structural dissatisfaction: Returning to circumstances that once pleased you, after having experienced a more thrilling or opulent way of life, and finding… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
The way that Dickens structured his books has a form that we most readily recognize now from, say, the great T.V. series,… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
I was a stepchild in two different families. The hardest thing about being a stepchild is you know that in some way… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
The part of the process that's exciting to me is feeling like I'm in a place I've never been before, in every… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
The answers were maddeningly absent—it was like trying to remember a song that you knew made you feel a certain way, without… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
As a journalist, I have wanted very much to find a way to write about the music industry, and it's been frustrating… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
To some degree, we're all thinking about the same things. It's the zeitgeist. The trick, in a way, as a writer, is… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
In a way, I started 'Goon Squad' not even realizing I was writing a book. I thought I was just writing a… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
That adage about 'Write what you know' is basically the opposite of the way I function. I write about what I'm curious… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
I don't really begin with ideas about genre. I certainly wrote a gothic novel, 'The Keep,' that conformed to and, in some… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
“I think ethical ambivalence is a kind of innoculation, a way of excusing yourself in advance for something you actually want to… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
The average person might articulate them differently, but we all think about interpersonal relationships in one way or another. Writers just express… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
There's something very strange about associating me with that prize. I had hoped for it in a more directed way as a… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
happened as I listened: I felt pain. Not in my head, not in my arm, not in my leg; everywhere at once.… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
I write fiction longhand. That's not so much about rejecting technology as being unable to write fiction on a computer for some… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
'Look at Me' started with Rockford, Illinois and New York and the question of how much image culture was changing our inner… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
“Behind the desk was nothing but view-the whole city flung out in front of us the way street vendors fling out their towels packed… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
I just think that, for my particular personality, feeling slightly invisible is always a help. — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
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… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
As a reader and a writer, I'm happiest when apparently mutually exclusive states can somehow coexist. — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
I teach intermittently, and while I enjoy it, I don't find that it's a calling for me. — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
Like all failed experiments, that one taught me something I didn’t expect: one key ingredient of so-called experience is the delusional faith that it… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
“Thousands of solar panels lift and tilt at the same time, in the same way. I clutch at Dad's arm: "Why are they doing… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
It was the hat. He looked sweet in the hat. How could a man in a fuzzy blue hat have used human bones to… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
I was a stepchild in two different families. The hardest thing about being a stepchild is you know that in some way everything would… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
“The seconds pass. I know what’s going on because it’s the same thing that always happens: give me something nice, something I love or… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
I had this idea that I could hire myself out as a person to go on archeological digs and dig, without any training! I… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
At night, the house thick with sleep, she would peer out her bedroom window at the trees and sky and feel the presence of… — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
