“You can only write regularly if you're willing to write badly. You can't write regularly and well. One should accept bad writing as a way of priming the pump, a warm-up exercise that allows you to write well.” — Jennifer Egan Copy Share Image
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 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
I just think that, for my particular personality, feeling slightly invisible is always a help. — Jennifer Egan Copy Share
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
As a reader and a writer, I'm happiest when apparently mutually exclusive states can somehow coexist. — Jennifer Egan Copy Share
I teach intermittently, and while I enjoy it, I don't find that it's a calling for me. — Jennifer Egan Copy Share
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
“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
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
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
“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
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
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
I number my drafts, and by the time a book is done, I'll have 75 or 80 drafts of some sections. — Jennifer Egan Copy Share
Read at the level at which you want to write. Reading is the nourishment that feeds the kind of writing you want to do. — Jennifer Egan Copy Share
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
