American - Novelist | September 7, 1962 -
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
CharacterEyesMeWorldThinkLogic
I'm not a wildly gifted person; I don't play an instrument or speak another language or have great accomplishments in another field, as many writers do. But writing feels natural to me; the act of it seems to free up my unconscious, so that sometimes I feel that I have access to more ideas and information than my conscious mind could think up.
GreatMindMeIdeasWritingThink
I hope to keep writing journalism as long as I write fiction; it's afforded me such amazing adventures and opportunities. It does take a lot of time, so it's hard to do both at once, but I try to do a big journalism piece every couple of years, and I'll hopefully continue with that.
HopeTimeAmazingMeWritingLong
The way that Dickens structured his books has a form that we most readily recognize now from, say, the great T.V. series, like 'The Wire' or 'The Sopranos.' There's one central plot line, but then from that spin off all kinds of subplots.
GreatNowSayWayLineSpin
I was on a very bumpy plane ride, an overnight flight. I was so miserable, and I pulled out 'David Copperfield,' and I forgot how scared and tired I was, and I thought, 'This is what reading should be.' I'm utterly transported out of my current situation.
RideTiredReadingThoughtSituation
I find myself thinking more about the past as I get older... maybe because there's just more of it to think about. At the same time, I'm less haunted by it than I was as a younger person. I guess that's probably the ideal: to reach a point where you have access to all of your memories, but you don't feel victimized by them.
MemoriesTimeMyselfPastThinking
That adage about 'Write what you know' is basically the opposite of the way I function. I write about what I'm curious to find out.
CuriousYouFindKnowWayWrite
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.
TechnologyFeelSomeoneYoungNow
I'm a dogged person. I respond to adversity with a steely resistance.
AdversityPersonResistanceRespond
I was a stepchild in two different families. The hardest thing about being a stepchild is you know that in some way everything would be easier if you didn't exist.
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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.
FatherFireChildhoodMeLovedSand
I think literary theory satisfied a deep love I have for big, encompassing narratives about the world and how it works - which are usually, in the end, more creative visions unto themselves than illuminating explanations.
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