361 Quotes by Jennifer Egan

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.

Vinegar: that’s what fear smells like.

It’s finished. Everything went past, without me.

Everybody sounds stoned, because they’re e-mailing people the whole time they’re talking to you.

I listened to classic rock and roll, and punk rock. ‘Goon Squad’ provides a pretty accurate playlist of my teenage years, though it leaves out ‘The Who,’ which was my absolute favorite band.

Phoebe burst into tears. For several minutes she stood weeping in the middle of the road, the choking, gulping sobs of childhood. Something was wrong; something was wrong but she didn’t know what. She was alone in the middle of nowhere, behaving strangely, with no one around to help her, and what people were around she wanted only to escape.

I think, for one thing, all of us remember those teenage years and those songs that we fell in love with and the music scene that we were part of. So, in a certain way, music cuts through time like almost nothing else. You know, it makes us feel like we’re back in an earlier moment.

There are so many ways to go wrong. All we’ve got are metaphors, and they’re never exactly right. You can never just Say. The. Thing.

This vision tumbled over Phoebe with the force of revelation: she would stand somewhere and look back, she would live a life.