Jennifer Egan

“Both my own process and that of the publishing industry are just too slow to do anything other than play catch-up when it comes to anticipating change.”

“Life itself is so surprising, a predictable story is unsatisfying.”

“The bottom line is that I like my first drafts to be blind, unconscious, messy efforts; that's what gets me the best material.”

“You can start imagining all kinds of things characters would feel, but you have to have a sense of whether those imaginings might be right.”

“You can research until you're falling asleep, but that still doesn't mean you're really fluent in the material.”

“'Goon Squad' took about three years to write and that's the short end. My second novel, 'Look at Me,' took six years.”

“I'm obsessed with the Victorian novel. I can't help it. I feel like the novel then was so powerful and agile in ways I'm not sure it is now.”

“I don't know what happened to me," he said, shaking his head. "I honestly don't." ... "You grew up, Alex.”

“It was the hat. He looked sweet in the hat. How could a man in a fuzzy blue hat have used human bones to pave his roads?”

“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.”

“Sometimes I forget I have children, which is very strange. I feel guilty about it, as if my inattention will cause something to happen to them, even when I'm not responsible for them - that God will punish me.”

“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.'”

“There are a lot of writers who find a groove and spend a career mining that vein. I seem to be exactly the opposite.”

“I grew up as a step-kid, always a little outside, always trying hard to follow and fit in. But over time, I've come to feel that my tendency toward self-erasure is a deep and real part of me. I think I'd be this way no matter how I grew up.”

“Oh we'll know each other for forever' Bix said. 'The days of losing touch are almost gone.' 'What does that mean? ' Drew asks.'We're going to meet again in a different place,' Bix said. 'Everyone we've lost, we'll find. Or they'll find us.”

“He's rigged a tiny cassette player with a small set of foam earphones to listen to demo tapes and rough mixes. Occasionally he'll hand the device to Mindy, wanting her opinion, and each time, the experience of music pouring directly against her eardrums - hers alone - is a shock that makes her eyes well up; the privacy of it, the way it transforms her surroundings into a golden montage, as if she were looking back on this lark in Africa with Lou from some distant future.”

“'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.”

“Das mine!' protested Ava, Bennie's daughter, affirming Alex's recent theory that language acquisition involved a phase of speaking German. She snatched a plastic skillet away from his own daughter, Cara-Ann, who lurched after it, roaring, 'Mine pot! Mine pot!”

“I blurb a lot of books by women, and I'm eager to provide encouragement and support for young women.”

“One area I have a huge amount of trouble in is writing about myself. I get a heavy, almost depressed feeling.”