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There's something very strange about associating me with that prize. I had hoped for it in a more directed way as a journalist. Somehow as a journalist you know there are Pulitzers out there and you can work hard and get one. To win it for Fiction seems unbelievable.

Jennifer Egan

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Jennifer Egan
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: September 7
Novelist
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Winning
Hoped
Seems
Unbelievable
Hard
Directed
Work
Prize
Something
Journalist
Way
Somehow
Fiction
Strange
Associating

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It's finished. Everything went past, without me.
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That we have some history together that hasn’t happened yet.
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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.
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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.
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I'm always happy, Sasha said. Sometimes I just forget.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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Rich children are always blond, Jocelyn goes. It has to do with vitamins.
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Time’s a goon, right? You gonna let that goon push you around?” Scotty shook his head. “The goon won.
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Americans are less selfish than some of our politicians believe and will respond with reason and resilience to passionate clarity.
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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.
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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.
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Be willing and unafraid to write badly, because often the bad stuff...forms a base on which to build something better.
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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?
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[I]t may be that a crowd at a particular moment of history creates the object to justify its gathering.
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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.
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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.
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