Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Jennifer Egan
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: September 7
Novelist
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Wrong
Right
Many
Thing
Way
Metaphors
Never
Metaphor
Exactly
Ways

More quotes by Jennifer Egan

Image
'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
Image
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
Image
I loved every minute of my childhood - sunbathing on the fire escape, digging for buried treasure in the back yard, pulling alewives out of the sand... Then it was all taken away from me. I came back every summer to visit my father until I was 18, but I was always the outsider.
Jennifer Egan
Image
So I feel that lack of qualification. And I'm scared. And I have a tendency to think things may not/probably won't work out. That's my basic mindset.
Jennifer Egan
Image
Stu walked Bennie over to Chris in the chair and parted his hair to reveal some tan little creatures the size of poppy seeds moving around on his scalp. Bennie felt himself grow faint.'Lice' the barber whispered.'They get it at school'. 'But he goes to private school' Bernie had blurted.'In Crandale,New York!
Jennifer Egan
Image
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
Image
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
Image
One area I have a huge amount of trouble in is writing about myself. I get a heavy, almost depressed feeling.
Jennifer Egan
Image
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
Image
I know I'm famous and irresitible - a combination whose properties closely resemble radioactivity - and I know that you in this room are helpless against me.
Jennifer Egan
Image
I've never been that confident. I don't tend to think, swaggeringly, I'm going to ace this. It's just not who I am.
Jennifer Egan
Image
Kissing Mother Superior, incompetent, hairball, poppy seeds, on the can.
Jennifer Egan
Image
No one is waiting for me. In this story, I'm the girl no one is waiting for.
Jennifer Egan
Image
Now that Scotty has entered the realm of myth, everyone wants to own him. And maybe they should. Doesn't a myth belong to everyone?
Jennifer Egan
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
And the question is, which one is really you.
Jennifer Egan
Image
Sure, everything is ending, Jules said, but not yet.
Jennifer Egan
Image
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