Jennifer Egan Quotes

For me, you have to not have a formula. You have to not even sit down and say, 'I want to write right now.' It has to just kind of come out. It's not something you can plan.

Writing is no trouble: you just jot down ideas as they occur to you. The jotting is simplicity itself - it is the occurring which is difficult.

Sometimes things just fall out of your head on the paper, and if you're smart, you learn not to touch them.

Sometimes you don't really know what you're going to write about. I mean, there's times where you get into a writing room and it's a complete flop. And then there's times where you get to a writing room and you're like, 'Oh, I'm just on a roll.'

I write every day... I never get ideas unless I'm actually writing. Ideas I get in the shower don't do me any good.

Having imagination it takes you an hour to write a paragraph that if you were unimaginative would take you only a minute.

There aren't a lot of 'Aha!' moments in writing.

I have 40 years of unpublished material, the ones they don't pick, and the reason I don't redraw them or use them again is that I like to use my brain every day and come up with new jokes.

In a poem, the words happen; they just come. I let them. Otherwise, I wouldn't write. To interfere with what is happening is to distort the poem. Just a very small degree of intelligence and supervision is necessary. Very tactful. Any revision later that violates the text as it came, that begins rewriting the words, is fake.

I sit down and draw from my lyric book. I sit down and start looking through it and see if there is anything that strikes me that I've written.

I write a chapter, then edit it and edit it and edit it and edit it. I don't think we mine creativity from within. It's bestowed from on high, from God.

I don't write on demand - I wait for inspiration to come.

Writing is part intuition and part trial and error, but mostly it's very hard work.

I start with an idea that is no more than a paragraph long, and expand it slowly into an outline. But I'm always surprised by the directions things take when I actually start writing.

Very first thing in the morning, I spew some rough genius directly on to the laptop. Then I have coffee and rewrite for three hours.

Sometimes I write with music on, and if I'm in a good flow, I don't even hear it.

I don't know what the secret is when I am writing it - it really is a surprise to me.

You can't sit down and decide what you want to write about.

I never know what I'm going to write next, and when I think I do I usually turn out to be mistaken.

There are no rules and regulations for perfect composition. If there were we would be able to put all the information into a computer and would come out with a masterpiece. We know that's impossible. You have to compose by the seat of your pants.

Some writers sit down without a thought of what they are going to say, and they go through draft after draft.

When I'm writing something, I try not to get analytical about it as I'm doing it, as I'm writing it.

Creativity makes a leap, then looks to see where it is.

When I start to write, I don't have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come.

The writing that feels the best to me, I experience sometimes, is a kind of weirdly deep listening - like, it feels like if you just listen hard enough, the next sentence will tell you what it needs to be.