Quotes by Jay McInerney

“Hed imagined that many of the qualities that drew him toward her --intelligence, a sense of humor, shared values -- would prevent him from seeing her as an object of sexual desire. Corrine seemed unselfish and morally taut, which Luke had imagined, when he first met her, might protect him from being fatally attracted to her.”

“This is why I wanted to write this sooner rather than later. It sounds terrible to say, it really was the best of times and the worst of times, and it did bring out something wonderful in people here. People really wanted to be their best selves.”

“Ive always written about the larger social events of the moment. It just seemed like I had to confront this one.”

The capacity for friendship is Gods way of apologizing for our families.

Sometimes I think the difference between what we want and what were afraid of is about the width of an eyelash.

Its like, you cant trust anybody, and if somebody you know doesnt fuck you over its just because the price of selling you down the river was never high enough.

You never stopped thinking of yourself as a writer biding his time in the Department of Factual Verification. But between the job and the life there wasnt much time left over for emotion recollected in tranquillity.

Memories lurk like dustballs in the backs of drawers. The stereo is a special model that plays only music fraught with poignant associations.

You have always wanted to be a writer. Getting the job at the magazine was only your first step toward literacy celebrity. You used to write what you believed to be urbane sketches infinitely superior to those appearing in the magazine every week. You sent them up to Fiction; they came back with polite notes. Not quite right for us now, but thanks for letting us see this. You would try to interpret the notes: what about the word now-do they mean that you should submit this again, later? It wasnt the notes so much as the effort of writing that discouraged you.

For a few weeks you got up at six to compose short stories at the kitchen table with while Amanda slept in the other room. Then your night life started getting more interesting and complicated, and climbing out of bed became harder and harder. You were gathering experience for a novel. You went to parties with writers, cultivated a writerly persona. You wanted to be Dylan Thomas without the paunch. F. Scott Fitzgerald without the crack-up. You wanted to skip over the dull grind of actual creation.

He looks out the window at the falling snow, then turns and takes his wife in his arms, feeling grateful to be here even as he wonders what he is going to do with his life in strictly practical terms. For years he had trained himself to do one thing, and he did it well, but he doesnt know whether he wants to keep doing it for the rest of his life, for that matter, whether anyone will let him. He is still worrying when they go to bed.Feeling his wifes head nesting in the pillow below his shoulder, he is almost certain that they will find ways to manage. Theyve been learning to get by with less, and theyll keep learning. It seems to him as if theyre taking a course in loss lately. And as he feels himself falling asleep he has an insight he believes is important, which he hopes he will remember in the morning, although it is one of those thoughts that seldom survive translation to the language of daylight hours: knowing that whatever plenty befalls them together or separately in the future, they will become more and more intimate with loss as the years accumulate, friends dying or slipping away undramatically into the crowded past, memory itself finally flickering and growing treacherous toward the end; knowing that even the children who may be in their future will eventually school them in the pain of growth and separation, as their own parents and mentors die off and leave them alone in the world, shivering at the dark threshold.

This is shaping up even worse than you anticipated. Still, you feel a measure of detachment, as if you had suffered everything already and this were just a flashback. You wish that you had paid more attention when a woman you met at Heartbreak told you about Zen meditation. Think of all of this as an illusion. She cant hurt you. Nothing can hurt the samurai wh enters combat fully resolved to die. You have already accepted the inevitability of termination, as they say. Still, youd rather not have to sit through this.

The night has already turned on that imperceptible pivot where two A.M. changes to six A.M. You know this moment has come and gone, but you are not yet willing to concede that you have crossed the line beyond which all is gratuitous damage and the palsy of unraveled nerve endings. Somewhere back there you could have cut your losses, but your rode past that moment on a comet trail of white powder and now you are trying to hang on to the rush.

Your brain at this moment is composed of brigades of tiny Bolivian soldiers. They are tired and muddy from their long march through the night. There are holes in their boots and they are hungry. They need to be fed. The need the Bolivian Marching Powder.

The level of the room keeps changing. All of the surfaces swell and recede with oceanic rhytm. You are not quite all right. You are somewhat wrong.

The intercom buzzes while youre changing your shirt. You push the Talk button: Who is it? Narcotics squad. Were soliciting donations for children all over the world who have no drugs.

Id urge you to try German Riesling because its delicious, but I fear youll be more impressed if I tell you its cutting-edge. That, after all, is what we want to know-- whats now and happening. (Do you really think clunky square-toed shoes make your feet look better than those with slimming, tapered toes? You just wear them because thats what fashion dictates, you slut.)

You are the stuff of which consumer profiles – American Dream: Educated Middle-Class Model – are made. When youre staying at the Plaza with your beautiful wife, doesnt it make sense to order the best Scotch that money can buy before you go to the theater in your private limousine?

Under the spell of alcohol your differences recede.

Im a romantic you have to be to marry four times.