Jennifer Egan Quotes

I'm American; I was born and raised in America, and I don't want to fake who I am to fit a stereotype.

Cultural appropriation is a big problem, but the thing is, I didn't invent my life. I really lived in Africa.

You don't realise how cool your culture is until you get out of that phase of trying to fit in.

The thing about chameleoning your way through life is that it gets to where nothing is real.

"Native" always means people who belong someplace else, because they had once belonged somewhere. That shows that the white race does not really think they belong anywhere, because they think of everybody else as native.

The basis of national identity is to say, "This is authentic to me or my forebears," and is there even such a thing? How authentic is it to your life? Just because your grandfather did it, what does that have to do with you? If I say I'm working in the style of Rembrandt, so what? You can say it, but are you really? No, because when you try to literally copy a cultural artifact, you change it. It dissolves, and then who's looking at it? People who appreciate that kind of drawing, or people it means nothing to?

I am the same artist with the same nagging questions I had in my early 20's. What's real and what isn't? How do we tell what's real in our lives? How do we see things as they are? What is my role in life? If the Signature hadn't forced the issue by devoting its season to my plays, I could at least believe I had changed. Really, they're all the same! What is SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION but THE HOUSE OF BLUE LEAVES with money?

Other people have faces; Susan and Jinny have faces; they are here. Their world is the real world. The things they lift are heavy. They say Yes, they say No; whereas I shift and change and am seen through in a second. If they meet a housemaid she looks at them without laughing. But she laughs at me. They know what to say if spoken to. They laugh really; they get angry really; while I have to look first and do what other people do when they have done it.

Now that's a concept that's always fascinated me: the real world. Only a very specific subset of people use the term, have you noticed? To me, it seems self-evident that everyone lives in the real world - we all breathe real oxygen, eat real food, the earth under our feet feels equally solid to all of us. But clearly these people have a far more tightly circumscribed definition of reality, one that I find deeply mysterious, and an almost pathologically intense need to bring others into line with that definition.

Reality' is a word with many meanings.

People can try to make me into anything they want, but I think they're really throwing around language but saying the same thing.

To me, locs are a symbol of strength and beauty, almost like a lion's mane.

In photos, I don't know who the real me is - it's all pretend, just pretend. There's not much of myself in my work. If I'm looking in the mirror and I'm working, I'm looking at my make-up and my hair. It's not the same as looking at myself.

What is there in a name? It is merely an empty basket, until you put something into it.

If I could act like This was my real life, And not some cage where I've been placed, Well then, I could tell you The truth like I used to And not be afraid of sounding fake.

Absurdities are great or small in proportion to custom or insuetude.

American Jews, like Americans, have a very consumerist attitude toward their identity: they pick and choose the bits of this and that they like.

Marriage is what marriage is... It’s like going out and saying, ‘That tree is a car.’ Well, the tree’s not a car. A tree’s a tree. Marriage is marriage.

The only truth is that I live. Sincerely, I live. Who am I? Well, that's a bit much.

To a monster the norm must seem monstrous, since everyone is normal to himself.

The deeper I went into culture, the more confused I got. So I needed something more real. I said, "Okay, from now on, my country will be cinema."

Jewish comedians do the best Jewish jokes, and anyone else doing that, they don't have a right to, because they're not coming from that experience. I know that's a slightly heightened example, but it's the same thing. We're bumpkins, so we can make bumpkin jokes.

God, it would be good to be a fake somebody rather than a real nobody.

It was a dance of masks and every mask was perfect because every mask was a real face and every face was a real mask so there was no mask and there was no face for there was but one dance in which there was but one mask but one true face which was the same and which was a thing without a name which changed and changed into itself over and over.