Jennifer Egan Quotes

You know those little snow globes that you shake up? I always thought my brain was sort of like that. You know, where you just give it a shake and watch what comes out and shake it again. It's like that.

I write a lot in my head. I've never been driven to write things down.

It's really about living in your head... just looking out at the world, then going back into your head and tossing around a lot of ideas and coming out with something interesting to say.

I’m trying to think of one.

Rain on my head, call that brainstorming.

Ideas sometimes come from nowhere, and sometimes they take lots of thinking.

I don't get ideas, I have them. The trick is to remember where I've put them.

I actually feel that the different kinds of stories come out of different parts of my brain.

For memory, we use our imagination. We take a few strands of real time and carry them with us, then like an oyster we create a pearl around them.

When I write, my brain moves faster than my hands so I'm always trying to picture things.

I think one of things is that all fantasy it seems to me works the way your brain basically works. This is perhaps a startling concept, but I think it's true.

Whatever man does he must do first in his mind.

I do get obsessed with constantly thinking of ideas, all day long, but that's just how it is.

My process is thinking, thinking and thinking - thinking about my stories for a long time.

A lot of times, you have an idea, and all the things you are thinking about might fuel it. But that's not where the idea came from.

Writing is essentially an internal process.

Sometimes, I believe I actually see the wheels in my brain turning.

I don't think there is such a thing as pure imagination. I think it's a combination of memory and invention.

It's sort of a mystery where ideas come from.

I can't solve a puzzle for the life of me - my brain doesn't work that way. But I can take a very simple idea and extrapolate from it and spend time with it and pull things out of it.

So-called "inspiration" is no more than an extreme example of a process which constantly goes on in the minds of all of us.

An idea is a feat of association.

Memory whispers someplace in that jumbled machinery.

Ideas are floating like fish. Desire for an idea is like a bait on a hook. If you desire an idea, it pulls and it makes a kind of a bait. Ideas will come swimming up. And you don't know them until they enter the conscious mind. And then bingo! There it is! You know it instantly. And then more come in. If you go fishing for ideas, a lot of ideas will just pop in. And one of them will make you fall in love.

Remembering is a great invention of the mind.