361 Quotes by Jennifer Egan

Don’t get me wrong – I enjoy my real life, but I feel about it much the way I do about New York City, my chosen and adored home: I’m always happy to leave, and I’m always happy to come back.

It had been years since she’d fabricated a story from whole cloth. It brought a sense of returning to an earlier time when she was questioned more often and had fewer evasions at her disposal. Besides, she thought, looking into Rose’s relieved and joyful face, people practically told you the lies they wanted to hear.

All her excitement had seeped away, leaving behind a terrible sadness, an emptiness that felt violent, as if she’d been gouged.

How do you know a gangster?” “Usually, the room goes a little quiet when he walks in.

She could feel the logic of mechanical parts in her fingertips; this came so naturally that she could only think that other people didn’t really try.

I turn to contemporary fiction seeking a shared awareness with the writer of the cultural moment we both occupy, its peculiar challenges.

Now there are permanent gray smudges in Scotty’s vision. He says he likes them – actually, what he says is: “I consider them a visual enhancement.” We think they remind him of his mom.

She’d never been good at banter; it was like a skipping rope whose rhythm she couldn’t master enough to jump in with confidence. The war seemed not to exist here, despite the presence of officers in uniform.

Hilarity keeps you busy for several blocks, but there’s a sickness to it, like an itch that if you keep on scratching, will grind straight through skin and muscle and bone, shredding your heart.