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Structural dissatisfaction: Returning to circumstances that once pleased you, after having experienced a more thrilling or opulent way of life, and finding that you can no longer tolerate them.

Jennifer Egan

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Jennifer Egan
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: September 7
Novelist
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Longer
Returning
Way
Thrilling
Life
Pleased
Tolerate
Experienced
Findings
Opulent
Finding
Structural
Circumstances
Dissatisfaction

More quotes by Jennifer Egan

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Americans are less selfish than some of our politicians believe and will respond with reason and resilience to passionate clarity.
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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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
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Time’s a goon, right? You gonna let that goon push you around?” Scotty shook his head. “The goon won.
Jennifer Egan
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I haven't had writer's block. I think it's because my process involves writing very badly.
Jennifer Egan
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'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.
Jennifer Egan
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I am at my worst trying to write about things that overlap with my life.
Jennifer Egan
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Kissing Mother Superior, incompetent, hairball, poppy seeds, on the can.
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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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
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When does a fake Mohawk become a real Mohawk? Who decides? How do you know if it's happened?
Jennifer Egan
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Even the financial disclosure statements that political bloggers were required to post hadn't stemmed the suspicion that people's opinions weren't really their own. Who's paying you? was a retort that might follow any bout of enthusiasm, along with laughter - who would let themselves be bought?
Jennifer Egan
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Her only thought was of getting away, as if she were carrying a live grenade from inside the house, so that when it exploded, it would destroy just herself.
Jennifer Egan
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Kathy was a Republican, one of those people who used the unforgivable phrase meant to be--usually when describing her own good fortune or the disasters that had befallen other people.
Jennifer Egan
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I felt more doubtful than usual with 'Goon Squad,' because I knew that the book's genre wasn't easily named - Novel? Stories? Novel-in-stories? - and I worried that its lack of a clear category would count against it. My hopes for it were pretty modest.
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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This is the music business. 'Five years is five hundred years' - your words.
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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Because you can't write habitually and well all the time, you have to be willing to write badly. That's how you get the regularity that enables you to be present for the good stuff.
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