A biography for Jay McInerneyhasn’t been written yet.
“We've been hearing about the death of the novel ever since the day after Don Quixote was published.”
“There aren't many shy writers left.”
“Eat, drink and remarry is my motto.”
“Mine is not an autonomous imagination.”
“The most interesting things that happen in my books are usually the things that arise spontaneously, the things that surprise me.”
“I'm afraid that - not necessarily deliberately, but consistently - I've made a kind of laboratory out of my life, where I mix the stuff in the test tubes to create explosions - possibly resulting in interesting by-products. I mean, not deliberately - I'd be crazy to deliberately do that - or maybe not.”
“You know, Greenwich Village was the traditional bohemia of New York. I wish I could say that was entirely true now. It's, uh... changed. It's now got, God help us, investment bankers and journalists, but it's still a very beautiful part of New York.”
“The capacity for friendship is God's way of apologizing for our families.”
“Add anchovies to almost anything, in moderation, and it will taste better.”
“Memories lurk like dustballs in the backs of drawers. The stereo is a special model that plays only music fraught with poignant associations.”
“Yeah, 'Gossip Girl' is a good show. It's a real New York show, like 'Sex and the City.'”
“I always hope people will like me, and I'm always afraid they will think I'm a fraud. I try harder than perhaps I should to make people like me, then it backfires. They think I'm a buffoon.”
“Anybody who becomes a movie star becomes successful at projecting a certain image to the public.”
“I envy those writers who outline their novels, who know where they're going. But I find writing is a process of discovery.”
“Most novelists I know went through a period of intense self-examination and self-loathing after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. I certainly did.”
“The definition of gumbo is almost as slippery as that of Creole. Just as gumbo can contain pretty much any kind of meat or seafood, Creole is a vague and inclusive term for native New Orleanians, who may be black or white, depending on whom you're asking.”
“It's the cynics who never get married.”
“Love is the eternal quest: almost everyone wants to love and be loved.”
“Publishers send me a lot of first novels because my first novel was the defining novel of my career, and I guess a lot of people want my benediction or something.”
“You never stopped thinking of yourself as a writer biding his time in the Department of Factual Verification. But between the job and the life there wasn't much time left over for emotion recollected in tranquillity.”