Jennifer Egan Thinking Quotations

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.

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.

I think the one thing that's changed over time is that I've come to realise, as a fiction writer, the fact that I don't think it will work out, doesn't mean that it actually won't.

'Look at Me' started with Rockford, Illinois and New York and the question of how much image culture was changing our inner lives. That's an abstract idea; you don't think that's going to be a rocking work of fiction, but it seemed to fuse in a way that was interesting.

There's a fine line between thinking about somebody and thinking about not thinking about somebody, but I have the patience and the self-control to walk that line for hours - days, if I have to.

I think, The world is actually huge. That's the part no one can really explain.

I think ethical ambivalence is a kind of innoculation, a way of excusing yourself in advance for something you actually want to do. No offense.

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.

I haven't had writer's block. I think it's because my process involves writing very badly.

The average person might articulate them differently, but we all think about interpersonal relationships in one way or another. Writers just express that in different ways and capture it in different ways. To some degree, we're all thinking about the same things. It's the zeitgeist. The trick, in a way, as a writer, is to hope that your interests in some sense link up with the culture around you.

and it’s all kind of moving and sweet except that you’re not completely there—a part of you is a few feet away, or above, thinking,

Sometimes I imagine myself looking back on right now and I think like where will I be standing when I look back Will right now look like the beginning of a great life or... or what

I write fiction longhand. That's not so much about rejecting technology as being unable to write fiction on a computer for some reason. I don't think I would write it on a typewriter either. I write in a very blind gut instinctive way. It just doesn't feel right. There's a physical connection. And then in nonfiction that's not the case at all. I can't even imagine writing nonfiction by hand.

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, clichéd writing, outright flailing around. Writing that doesn’t have a good voice or any voice. But then there will be good moments. It seems writer’s block is often a dislike of writing badly and waiting for writing better to happen.

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.