Jay McInerney

“If being a spokesman for a generation is a fleeting occupation, being a symbol of an era is downright dangerous for anyone who has the bad luck to outlive it.”

“Most of the people I write about have been ambitious outlanders who have been attracted to New York from other parts of the world.”

“I remain a fan of my friend Bret Easton Ellis's 'American Psycho.' I think as a book about New York in the '80s it was pretty excellent.”

“Sometimes I think everything I touch turns into a Page Six item.”

“I've been interested in writing and storytelling since I learned to read, but it wasn't until I read Dylan Thomas, when I was 14, that I became interested in language itself, and saw it as more than a transparent medium for a story.”

“I don't think I found my voice until I reached New York. I suppose it's possible I would have had some kind of different literary career if I had not discovered New York.”

“I certainly think that the publishing houses have to learn more about this informal network of literary blogging and get over the idea that sending an author on a book tour - to Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles - is a successful model anymore.”

“There is a type of writer that can happily bury themselves in the country and dig very deep, but I'm not like that.”

“I think a lot of the people who write about me think that if they had to write fewer interviews then they would transcribe their life-story and it would be a big success. Or should be.”

“I'm a romantic; you have to be to marry four times.”

“I like the fact that I'm living in the world rather than in a university.”

“I don't want to have my life fall apart for my work.”

“You know, I'm always surprised when I read profiles, and they make me sound so jaded. I am so not jaded.”

“I don't think I've left a trail of weeping women in my wake. I mean, the number of serious relationships I've had has not been into double digits.”

“'Socialist' is the nastiest thing you can say about an American politician in some quarters.”

“There's a socialist bias to the consensus of the literary world: a '30s mentality that says factory workers are more worthy of our attention.”

“I feel that there's a lot of would-be guardians of the culture who think that high-minded literary purpose and the life that gets chronicled in the gossip columns, that these two things are incompatible.”

“It's like, you can't trust anybody, and if somebody you know doesn't fuck you over it's just because the price of selling you down the river was never high enough.”

“When you catch yourself lying to your therapist, you know it's a waste of money.”

“Sometimes I think the difference between what we want and what we're afraid of is about the width of an eyelash.”