Jennifer Egan Quotes

Suppose you want to be a great archeologist, and you join a successful archeologist as a student assistant, and he tells you where to dig. You dig up a marvelous discovery. Now I ask you, who should get the credit: the director or the digger?

When there wasn't a lot of work, I wrote a screenplay, 'What Lies Beneath,' which got noticed and got me more acting jobs. As I got more jobs, I was able to make my own films. That ethos of making my own work has provided me with a lot of opportunities.

It is very different trying to help a community organization than trying to sell yourself or sell a product.

To excavate a pyramid is the dream of every archaeologist.

As an undergraduate, I had an opportunity to go on a number of archeological digs. So I had experience excavating, digging up remains of ancient Indian villages in the Midwest and in the Southwest.

I didn't have any media training - I didn't have anybody but myself.

We are the only ones who really can care about the preservation Foreigners who come to excavate, maybe some of them care about preservation, but the majority care about discoveries.

I never did any training in journalism or in finance, so I really was in the deep end. I got very good at going to press conferences and nodding. I'd figure it out when I got back to the office. Charts and numbers. I've never been great with facts, ever, my whole life. For a journalist, that's not a very good trait.

Most people in archeology find their specialties in strange and unique ways. I always wanted to do archaeology, and then the time came for me to actually be in the field, and it was excruciatingly boring. Excavation is really, really boring.

What satellites help to show us is we've actually only found a fraction of a percent of ancient settlements and sites all over the world... It's the most exciting time in history to be an archaeologist.

I don't know how many times I can sit there and talk about my character or my life. It's interesting to talk about experiences in the context of something you're doing for somebody else, and particularly if you can persuade others to join you in your support.

Playing all of these games, getting to know everything about the NBA, you realize that you are your own business. You have business meetings to go to, signings to go to. Like, I'm only 20, but the stuff I'm doing the average 20-year-old isn't doing.

A young man who does not have what it takes to perform military service is not likely to have what it takes to make a living. Today's military rejects include tomorrow's hard-core unemployed.

When I was starting out, I didn't know what the hell I was doing and my person who was helping me out, I didn't even have an agent, got me five or six big auditions for leads in movies in 1986 that I had no business auditioning for. I think I ran out of three of them before I'd even finished.

All of a sudden, you have this newborn you have no training for. It's frightening.

Well, we could tell them that we're here on an archeological expedition.

I would really love to go on an archaeological dig.

I've always felt you unearth story, like you're on an archeological dig.

I never used the press for anything except my charity.

Towards sunset we had cleared down to the level of the 12th step, which was sufficient to expose a large part of the upper portion of a plastered and sealed doorway.

I've always treated my career like independent. Everything that I got is because of myself, my own endorsements, my own touring myself.

I have very interesting hobbies like archeology and photography.

I've found numerous things - settlements, temples, possible pyramids, forts, roads - the list goes on and on. I'm not as interested in the discoveries as the types of questions they help us formulate.

With acting, I felt like I had a lot to prove because I didn't study it; I didn't work my way up in a traditional sense.

There is no human-resources training for how to respond when you work for an unpredictable president. It's perhaps fitting that when you visit the website of the White House Office of Administration it says, 'Check back soon for more information.'