Jennifer Egan

“I write totally spontaneously. I actually write fiction by hand - that always seems to startle people. I think the reason I do that is to bypass the thinking part of me and get to the more u...”

“I haven't had trouble with writer's block. I think it's because my process involves writing very badly. My first drafts are filled with lurching, cliched writing, outright flailing around. W...”

“When I think about a book like 'A Clockwork Orange,' which I really loved, the weird hybrid language is what I remember most.”

“As a reader and a writer, I'm happiest when apparently mutually exclusive states can somehow coexist.”

“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...”

“I think a playful critique is good for all of us, and that's basically how I see satire functioning. But I'm not interested in a kind of contemptuous satirical vision; I try always, even whe...”

“Proust, my big inspiration for 'Goon Squad,' uses music a lot in his novel, both in terms of plot and structure. I liked the idea of doing the same thing, which is one reason I structured 'G...”

“I've tried writing on a computer thinking it would make me more efficient, but if you're writing crummy stuff, being efficient is no help.”

“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...”

“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...”

“Reading is a lot like eating for me: If I try to read a book I'm not hungry for, I won't enjoy it, but if I wait until I have a real appetite for something, I'll devour it.”

“I guess my comfort zone as a writer is diametrically opposed to my comfort zone as a human being.”

“I'm a dogged person. I respond to adversity with a steely resistance.”

“If you read novels of the 19th century, they're pretty experimental. They take lots of chances; they seem to break a lot of rules. You've got omniscient narrators lecturing at times to the r...”

“For me, New York is about anonymity; that's the draw. It's not at all about other people in my business being nearby. It's that I can get on the subway and eavesdrop on conversations that I...”

“I'm partial to epic poetry, which might be surprising given that I don't write poetry at all. The combination of rollicking storytelling with musical language seems to me the highest achieve...”

“Remaining a pop phenomenon for 20 years without dying or lapsing into self-parody is quite a feat.”

“I think the one thing that's changed over time is that I've come to realise, as a fiction writer, the fact that I don't think it will work out, doesn't mean that it actually won't.”

“It's our job as fiction writers to provide a delight that nothing else can - to such a degree that people have no choice but to read our work. Now that's a very tall order, if not impossible...”

“I love working with genre. And to me, the Victorian novel is the flourishing ancestor I'm always trying to access when I write.”