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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

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Jennifer Egan
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: September 7
Novelist
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Major
Paid
Line
Lines
Bullshit
Lying
Sell
Write
Sells
Back
Selling
Writing
Majors

More quotes by Jennifer Egan

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The sky was electric blue above the trees but the yard felt dark. Stephanie went to the edge of the lawn and sat her forehead on her knees. The grass and soil were still warm from the day. She wanted to cry but she couldn't. The feeling was too deep.
Jennifer Egan
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Being somewhere but not completely: that was home for Danny. . . . All he needed was a cellphone or I-access, or both at once, or even just a plan to leave wherever he was and go someplace else really really soon.
Jennifer Egan
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No one is waiting for me. In this story, I'm the girl no one is waiting for.
Jennifer Egan
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I can't tell if she's actually real, or if she's stopped caring if she's real or not. Or is not caring what makes a person real?
Jennifer Egan
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Rich children are always blond, Jocelyn goes. It has to do with vitamins.
Jennifer Egan
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But I always need to identify with a character to write about him or her - and by identify, I mean see the world through that person's eyes and have a strong sense of the inner logic of their acts and decisions, wacky or wrongheaded though they might be. In that sense, I think there's some of me in all of them.
Jennifer Egan
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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
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And the question is, which one is really you.
Jennifer Egan
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I don't really know where my ideas come from. I start with a time and a place. That's what I need to get started, and an intellectual question.
Jennifer Egan
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One area I have a huge amount of trouble in is writing about myself. I get a heavy, almost depressed feeling.
Jennifer Egan
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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?
Jennifer Egan
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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
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I'm always happy, Sasha said. Sometimes I just forget.
Jennifer Egan
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The problem was precision, perfection the problem was digitization, which sucked the life out of everything that got smeared through its microscopic mesh.
Jennifer Egan
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There's a fine line between thinking about somebody and thinking about not thinking about somebody, but I have the patience and the self-control to walk that line for hours - days, if I have to.
Jennifer Egan
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The bottom line is that I like my first drafts to be blind, unconscious, messy efforts that's what gets me the best material.
Jennifer Egan
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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
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I grew up in the 70s, when people talked on the phone - and just talked more. I remember the phone was the epicenter of our house. I spent hours every evening as a teenager waiting for the phone to ring and talking to my friends. Before the age of technology, it was also easier to just disappear from the face of the earth.
Jennifer Egan
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Oh we'll know each other forever, Bix says. The days of losing touch are almost gone.
Jennifer Egan
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I did go on safari in Kenya when I was 17, with my mother, stepfather and little brother, and I kept a careful journal of the experience that was very helpful in terms of my sensory impressions of Africa. I have traveled quite a bit at distinct times in my life, though now that I have kids I've settled down.
Jennifer Egan