Quotes by Jennifer Egan

Americans are less selfish than some of our politicians believe and will respond with reason and resilience to passionate clarity.

— Jennifer Egan

Wisdom

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

Hope

'Goon Squad' took about three years to write and that's the short end. My second novel, 'Look at Me,' took six years.

— Jennifer Egan

Wisdom

I did go on safari in Kenya when I was 17, with my mother, stepfather and little brother, and I kept a careful journal of the experience that was very helpful in terms of my sensory impressions of Africa. I have traveled quite a bit at distinct times in my life, though now that I have kids I've settled down.

— Jennifer Egan

Life

We live in a moment and a culture when reading is really endangered. There's simply no way to write well, though, if you're not reading well.

— Jennifer Egan

Wisdom

The bottom line is that I like my first drafts to be blind, unconscious, messy efforts; that's what gets me the best material.

— Jennifer Egan

Success

Proust, my big inspiration for 'Goon Squad,' uses music a lot in his novel, both in terms of plot and structure. I liked the idea of doing the same thing, which is one reason I structured 'Goon Squad' as a record album, with an A side and a B side, that's built around the contrasting sounds of the individual numbers in it.

— Jennifer Egan

Wisdom

I find myself thinking more about the past as I get older... maybe because there's just more of it to think about. At the same time, I'm less haunted by it than I was as a younger person. I guess that's probably the ideal: to reach a point where you have access to all of your memories, but you don't feel victimized by them.

— Jennifer Egan

Wisdom

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

Wisdom

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

Success

Technology makes everyone feel old. A laptop is old after two years. Someone always has something newer. Everyone seems to feel obsolete now, even the young.

— Jennifer Egan

Wisdom

The book that is the closest genetically to 'Goon Squad' is 'Look at Me.' It has the futuristic element - although, freakishly, almost every aspect I invented has come to pass in some way, including the terrorist who fantasies about blowing up the World Trade Centre. That was extremely uncomfortable. The book came out on the week of 9/11.

— Jennifer Egan

Life

I write totally spontaneously. I actually write fiction by hand - that always seems to startle people. I think the reason I do that is to bypass the thinking part of me and get to the more unconscious part, which is where all the good ideas seem to be.

— Jennifer Egan

Wisdom

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

Wisdom

I'm a dogged person. I respond to adversity with a steely resistance.

— Jennifer Egan

Wisdom

I've never been that confident. I don't tend to think, swaggeringly, 'I'm going to ace this.' It's just not who I am.

— Jennifer Egan

Wisdom

That adage about 'Write what you know' is basically the opposite of the way I function. I write about what I'm curious to find out.

— Jennifer Egan

Wisdom

I haven't had trouble with writer's block. I think it's because my process involves writing very badly. My first drafts are filled with lurching, cliched writing, outright flailing around. Writing that doesn't have a good voice or any voice. But then there will be good moments.

— Jennifer Egan

Wisdom

Nowadays I'm more interested in what you'd call 'alternative.' Lately we've been listening to a lot of Mumford & Sons, and Jenny Owen Youngs. I'm also pretty crazy about the Kings of Convenience, a Norwegian band that's been compared to Simon and Garfunkel.

— Jennifer Egan

Wisdom

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

Wisdom

What lists and awards don't measure - and I feel this strongly - is the lasting value of any work of art. They're a snapshot of a moment, and one should always consider their judgments in that context.

— Jennifer Egan

Success

In a way, I'm always trying to do something I'm not qualified to do. So I feel that lack of qualification. And I'm scared. And I have a tendency to think things may not/probably won't work out. That's my basic mindset.

— Jennifer Egan

Success

The music industry is an interesting lens through which to look at change, because it has had such a difficult time adjusting to the digital age.

— Jennifer Egan

Wisdom

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

Wisdom