101sharequotes Quotes Topics Famous Occupations Motivation Inspirational Life Love Funny Success Friendship ☰

Jennifer Egan

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 war

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 work

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 best

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 reading

'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 novel

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 time

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 time

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

— Jennifer Egan passion

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

— Jennifer Egan adversity

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

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

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 inspiration

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 love

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 you

When I was little, I wanted to be a doctor. I was really interested in gore. My grandfather was an orthopedic surgeon and he had a lot of books in his library that I would just pore over. A lot of them had really horrible pictures of deformities.

— Jennifer Egan hope

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 art

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 writing

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 think

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 age

But I always need to identify with a character to write about him or her - and by 'identify,' I mean see the world through that person's eyes and have a strong sense of the inner logic of their acts and decisions, wacky or wrongheaded though they might be. In that sense, I think there's some of me in all of them.

— Jennifer Egan world

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 writing

I listened to classic rock and roll, and punk rock. 'Goon Squad' provides a pretty accurate playlist of my teenage years, though it leaves out 'The Who,' which was my absolute favorite band.

— Jennifer Egan age

I think, for one thing, all of us remember those teenage years and those songs that we fell in love with and the music scene that we were part of. So, in a certain way, music cuts through time like almost nothing else. You know, it makes us feel like we're back in an earlier moment.

— Jennifer Egan love

I was obsessed with The Who. I would have accepted a marriage proposal from Roger Daltrey on the spot. I went to all of their shows in San Francisco and some in L.A. That was as close as I got to being a groupie.

— Jennifer Egan marriage

I was on a very bumpy plane ride, an overnight flight. I was so miserable, and I pulled out 'David Copperfield,' and I forgot how scared and tired I was, and I thought, 'This is what reading should be.' I'm utterly transported out of my current situation.

— Jennifer Egan reading

It seemed impossible that a scrappy book like Goon Squad could win an award like that. Its such an iconic honor. I think what the Pulitzer means to me is that Ill need to work very, very hard to try to live up to it.

— Jennifer Egan war

Share your thoughts on Jennifer Egan quotes with the community:

Next

Maybe you are looking for Jennifer Egan quotes, Jennifer Egan sayings?

Here are quotes most suitable for various topics. In the web you can find use by keywords: quotes Jennifer Egan Jennifer Egan quotes Jennifer Egan sayings Jennifer Egan famous quotes Jennifer Egan best quotes