Quote

We live in a moment and a culture when reading is really endangered. There's simply no way to write well, though, if you're not reading well.

Jennifer Egan

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Jennifer Egan
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: September 7
Novelist
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Live
Endangered
Wells
Simply
Well
Though
Writing
Reading
Really
Moment
Way
Culture
Write
Moments

More quotes by 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
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
Image
I'm always happy, Sasha said. Sometimes I just forget.
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
Nineteen eighty is almost here, thank God. the hippies are getting old, they blew their brains on acid and now they're begging on street corners all over San Francisco. Their hair is tangled and their bare feet are thick and gray as shoes. We're sick of them.
Jennifer Egan
Image
Sure, everything is ending, Jules said, but not yet.
Jennifer Egan
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Everyone we've lost, we'll find. Or they'll find us.
Jennifer Egan
Image
Time’s a goon, right? You gonna let that goon push you around?” Scotty shook his head. “The goon won.
Jennifer Egan
Image
Kissing Mother Superior, incompetent, hairball, poppy seeds, on the can.
Jennifer Egan
Image
I wonder what Proust would have made of our present-day locus of collective fantasy, the Internet. I’m guessing he would have seized on its wistful aspect, pointing out gently and with wry humor that much of what beguiles us is the act of reaching for what isn’t there.
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]t may be that a crowd at a particular moment of history creates the object to justify its gathering.
Jennifer Egan
Image
When does a fake Mohawk become a real Mohawk? Who decides? How do you know if it's happened?
Jennifer Egan
Image
Technology makes everyone feel old. A laptop is old after two years. Someone always has something newer. Everyone seems to feel obsolete now, even the young.
Jennifer Egan
Image
If you don't have people that the reader cares about and stories that are gripping, you've got nothing.
Jennifer Egan
Image
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
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
I am at my worst trying to write about things that overlap with my life.
Jennifer Egan