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If I had a view like this to look down on every day, I would have the energy and inspiration to conquer the world. The trouble is, when you most need such a view, no one gives it to you.
--
Jennifer Egan
#Inspiration
#Views
#Giving
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I write my first draft by hand, at least for fiction. For non-fiction, I write happily on a computer, but for fiction I write by hand, because I'm trying to achieve a kind of thoughtless state, or an unconscious instinctive state. I'm not reading what I write when I wrote. It's an unconscious outpouring that's a mess, and it's many, many steps away from anything anyone would want to read. Creating that way seems to generate the most interesting material for me to work with, though.
--
Jennifer Egan
#Reading
#Writing
#Creating
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Read at the level at which you want to write. Reading is the nourishment that feeds the kind of writing you want to do.
--
Jennifer Egan
#Reading
#Writing
#Levels
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A sense of that kind of narrative movement that we experience online could have been in my mind easily, though not consciously. I do rely so much on my unconscious, the way I write my stuff the way I do. I let my unconscious work. I have better ideas that way and more interesting work.
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Jennifer Egan
#Writing
#Ideas
#Interesting
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I'm always happy," Sasha said. "Sometimes I just forget.
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Jennifer Egan
#Sometimes
#Forget
#Said
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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.
--
Jennifer Egan
#Thinking
#Average
#Degrees
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The answers were maddeningly absent—it was like trying to remember a song that you knew made you feel a certain way, without a title, artist, or even a few bars to bring it back.
--
Jennifer Egan
#Song
#Artist
#Trying
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We're [writers] all afraid of writing badly, and there are psychological reasons, like the bad interior of ourselves is somehow being revealed, but we all fear that, and you can't write well if you're not willing to write badly. That's why you have to make writing a habit, so it feels normal and not strange.
--
Jennifer Egan
#Writing
#Normal
#Strange
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I don’t want to fade away, I want to flame away - I want my death to be an attraction, a spectacle, a mystery. A work of art.
--
Jennifer Egan
#Life
#Art
#Flames
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There are so many ways to go wrong. All we've got are metaphors, and they're never exactly right. You can never just Say. The. Thing.
--
Jennifer Egan
#Way
#Metaphor
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We lie. That's what we do. You're selling me a line of bullshit and you want me to sell you a line of bullshit back so you can write a major line of bullshit and be paid for it.
--
Jennifer Egan
#Lying
#Writing
#Bullshit
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Reading is the nourishment that lets you do interesting work,
--
Jennifer Egan
#Reading
#Interesting
#Nourishment
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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
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Jennifer Egan
#Thinking
#Looks
#Sometimes
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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.
--
Jennifer Egan
#Block
#Writing
#Thinking
-
Sure, everything is ending," Jules said, "but not yet.
--
Jennifer Egan
#Change
#Said
-
The pause makes you think the song will end. And then the song isn't really over, so you're relieved. But then the song does actually end, because every song ends, obviously, and THAT. TIME. THE. END. IS. FOR. REAL.
--
Jennifer Egan
#Music
#Song
#Real
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I haven't had writer's block. I think it's because my process involves writing very badly.
--
Jennifer Egan
#Block
#Writing
#Thinking
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I think, for one thing, all of us remember those teenage years and those songs that we fell in love with and the music scene that we were part of. So, in a certain way, music cuts through time like almost nothing else. You know, it makes us feel like we're back in an earlier moment.
--
Jennifer Egan
#Love
#Song
#Teenage
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I was a stepchild in two different families. The hardest thing about being a stepchild is you know that in some way everything would be easier if you didnt exist.
--
Jennifer Egan
#Two
#Different
#Would Be
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some mornings... I sit at the kitchen table shaking salt into the hairs on my arm, and a feeling shoves up in me: it's finished. Everything went past without me.
--
Jennifer Egan
#Morning
#Past
#Hair
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They were snobs or idiots or both...yet she was inexplicably crushed by their coldness.
--
Jennifer Egan
#Idiot
#Snob
#Crushed
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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,
--
Jennifer Egan
#Sweet
#Moving
#Thinking
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The world is full of shitheads, Rhea. Don’t listen to them—listen to me. And I know that Lou is one of those shitheads. But I listen.
--
Jennifer Egan
#World
#Shitheads
#Listen To Me
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and the question is, which one is really “you,
--
Jennifer Egan
-
And Alex understood that Scotty Hausmann did not exist. He was a word casing in human form: a shell whose essence has vanished.
--
Jennifer Egan
#Essence
#Alex
#Shells
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a swell of gratitude and appreciation for his assistant, as opposed to the murderous rage he felt toward the rest of his staff
--
Jennifer Egan
#Gratitude
#Appreciation
#Assistants
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What he needed was to find fifty more people like him, who had stopped being themselves without realizing it.
--
Jennifer Egan
#People
#Fifty
#Realizing
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reach isn’t describable in terms of cause and effect anymore: it’s simultaneous.
--
Jennifer Egan
#Causes
#Simultaneous
#Cause And Effect
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That we have some history together that hasn’t happened yet.
--
Jennifer Egan
#Together
