When I’m not writing, I feel an awareness that something’s missing. If I go a long time, it becomes worse. I become depressed. There’s something vital that’s not happening. Jennifer Egan Read Quote
My first attempt at writing a novel was horrible. I had to throw it away. But I stuck with the idea, which is what became ‘The Invisible Circus.’ Jennifer Egan Read Quote
Sometimes I’ll watch teenagers and find myself not quite believing I’m older than they are – even wondering, delusionally, if they can see any difference between us. Jennifer Egan Read Quote
I’m not sure if the passage of time affects our core identities so much as reveals them to us. Jennifer Egan Read Quote
I number my drafts, and by the time a book is done, I’ll have 75 or 80 drafts of some sections. Jennifer Egan Read Quote
That American confidence is more alive and well than it should be, to this day. But it’s such a problem. There’s a blindness to that confidence, a presumption that what’s good for me is good for you. No! That’s what teenagers think: the world revolves around them. As a nation, we’ve got to stop thinking that way. We’re getting too old for that. Jennifer Egan Read Quote
I grew up in the 1970s, and my friends and I felt very keenly that we had missed the ’60s. We were bummed out about it. Jennifer Egan Read Quote
I love the infinite variety of New York, how it’s the epicenter of so many worlds. Jennifer Egan Read Quote
I love how close New York is to Europe; I love the seasons, and I don’t think I could live without them. They’re the way I track the passage of time. Jennifer Egan Read Quote
It’s not that I sit down and write great stuff without thinking, not at all. Most of it is terrible. But the stuff that feels fun and fresh to me tends to happen fairly unthinkingly. Jennifer Egan Read Quote
