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48 quotes by Jennifer Egan

Jennifer Egan (born September 7, 1962) is an American novelist and short story writer who lives in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Egan's novel A Visit from the Goon Squad won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction.
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I felt more doubtful than usual with 'Goon Squad,' because I knew that the book's genre wasn't easily named - Novel? Stories?... →

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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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I did go on safari in Kenya when I was 17, with my mother, stepfather and little brother, and I kept a careful journal of the experience that was... →

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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.

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The bottom line is that I like my first drafts to be blind, unconscious, messy efforts; that's what gets me the best material.

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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... →

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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... →

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'Goon Squad' took about three years to write and that's the short end. My second novel, 'Look at Me,' took six years.

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

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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... →

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In the case of 'Goon Squad,' which sold slowly for a long time despite the good reviews, those 'best of 2010' lists were pivotal, and... →

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It seemed impossible that a scrappy book like 'Goon Squad' could win an award like that. It's such an iconic honor. I think what the... →

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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... →

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