Quotes by Jennifer Egan

I felt no shame in these activities, because I understood what almost no one else seemed to grasp: that there was only an infinitesimal difference, a difference so small that it barely existed except as a figment of the human imagination, between working in a tall green glass building on Park Avenue and collecting litter in a park. In fact, there may have been no difference at all.

The world is full of shitheads, Rhea. Don’t listen to them—listen to me. And I know that Lou is one of those shitheads. But I listen.

Like all failed experiments, that one taught me something I didn’t expect: one key ingredient of so-called experience is the delusional faith that it is unique and special, that those included in it are privileged and those excluded from it are missing out. And I, like a scientist unwittingly inhaling toxic fumes from the beaker I was boiling in my lab, had, through sheer physical proximity, been infected by that same delusion and in my drugged state had come to believe I was Excluded: condemned to stand shivering outside the public library at Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street forever and...

happened as I listened: I felt pain. Not in my head, not in my arm, not in my leg; everywhere at once. I told myself there was no difference between being “inside” and being “outside,” that it all came down to X’s and O’s that could be acquired in any number of different ways, but the pain increased to a point where I thought I might collapse, and I limped away.

I guess it’s always romantic when two people fall in love.... Even if it turns out not to be real.

I smoked my first pipe with Seth. I knew the stuff was bad, but I was so tired of being the cop, begging and ragging at him, throwing Pampers in his face when he walked in the door. I wanted to be on the same side again. So I smoked with Seth one afternoon when the girls were napping, and oh my God, I can only think about this for a minute or every part of me will turn into a mouth wanting more: the sexiness of it, fucking Seth like wild for the first time in months, going on even when the girls started to whimper and bang on the door. Then looking out the window and seeing the world shake itself to life: the heavy trees, the sky. And I was back on top. We were going to make it, Seth and I. The voice in my head was back again, telling me stories, too many to write down or even tell one from another.

Its finished. Everything went past, without me.

...our familiar features rinsed in weird adulthood.

I cant tell if shes actually real, or if shes stopped caring if shes real or not. Or is not caring what makes a person real?

You can only write regularly if you’re willing to write badly… Accept bad writing as a way of priming the pump, a warm-up exercise that allows you to write well.

It made me alert, like someone had scrubbed mint all over my skin. Id walk into that stinking, miserable prison and for the next three hours, a wise and beautiful woman would float out of the wreckage of my life, and her words and thoughts and tiniest movements were precious.

...underneath that Id said something else: we were both a couple of asswipes, and now only Im an asswipe; why? And underneath that, something else: once an asswipe, always an asswipe.

When does a fake Mohawk become a real Mohawk? Who decides? How do you know if its happened?

No one is waiting for me. In this story, I’m the girl no one is waiting for. Usually the girl is fat, but my problem is more rare, which is freckles: I look like someone threw handfuls of mud at my face.

You said you were a fairy princessYou said you were a shooting starYou said wed go to Bora BoraNow look at where the fuck we are

See, Sasha muttered, eyeing the sun. Its mine.

Shed risked everything, and here was the result: the raw, warped core of her life.

A bit of theory as we settle down for lunch: the waiters treatment of Kitty is actually a kind of sandwich, with the bottom bread being the bored and slightly effete way he normally acts with customers, the middle being the crazed and abnormal way he feels around this famous nineteen-year-old girl, and the top bread being his attempt to contain and conceal this alien middle layer with some mode of behavior that at least approximates the bottom layer of boredom and effeteness that is his norm.

“Time’s a goon, right? You gonna let that goon push you around?” Scotty shook his head. “The goon won.”

“Times a goon right? Isnt that the expression?”