Jennifer Egan Quotes

After you get what you want you don't want it.

Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again.

No one is satisfied with their life's work.

I don't want to say I can't wait to get back to normal life, because I don't. I don't want to get back to normal life.

None are happy but by anticipation of change.

I was always a 'grass is greener' kind of guy.

The ox longs for the gaudy trappings of the horse; the lazy pack-horse would fain plough. [We envy the position of others, dissatisfied with our own.]

The whole society depends on creating ambition in you. Ambition means a conflict, ambition means that whatsoever you are, you are wrong - you have to be somewhere else. Wherever you are, you are wrong - you have to be somewhere else. A constant madness to be somewhere else, to be somebody else, is what ambition is.

Whichever way we look the prospect is disagreeable. Behind, we have left pleasures we shall never enjoy, and therefore regret; and before, we see pleasures which we languish to possess, and are consequently uneasy till we possess them.

Wanting more is just a recipe for heartache.

Doing stuff never feels as good as you hope it will feel.

I’m tired of doing what I don’t want to do to live the way I don’t want to live.

I couldn't stand it. I still can't stand it. I can't stand the way things are. I cannot tolerate this age.

The only dependable law of life - everything is always worse than you thought it was going to be.

Don't you ever imagine things differently than what they are? Oh, Marilla, how much you miss.

Pain is the difference between what is and what I want it to be.

Any object of desire is bound to bring frustration. Any expectation is bound to turn into frustration. Expectation is the beginning of frustration, the very seed. Beware of it!

You know, it's not the world I would have wanted, for sure.

Being frustrated is disagreeable, but the real disasters of life begin when you get what you want.

I should have been happy: I wasn’t.

I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing

Her future, she thought, was likely to be worse than her past, for after her years of contented renunciation, she had slipped back into desire and longing; she found joyless days of distasteful occupation harder and harder; she found the image of the intense and varied life she yearned for, and despaired of, becoming more and more importunate.

Of course things you don't know about are always nicer'n things you do, same as the pertater on 'tother side of the plate is always the biggest.

When a man is pleased with the lot of others, he is dissatisfied with his own, as a matter of course.

What is more miserable than discontent?