Jennifer Egan Quotes

British crime stories tend to be very internal, psychological, claustrophobic, very limited in terms of geography.

It's a dead give away of an inexperienced writer if every character speaks with the same voice.

I don't have a constituency, and I'm not autobiographical in any way. I write these deeply moral books in a country which would prefer irony to anything with a moral tone.

The contemporary crime novel is, at its best, a novel of character. That's where the suspense comes from.

Good writers know that crime is an entre into telling a greater story about character. Good crime writing holds up a mirror to the readers and reflects in a darker light the world in which they live.

The dark book has been terribly popular. Dark characters, dysfunction, and all sorts of things from reality that are true in our world.

I've always been a huge fan of thrillers like David Fincher's 'Se7en.' I am fascinated by the disturbing, dark underbelly of life. I find such films deeply engrossing. They delve deep into the human psyche, and that's a place worth exploring.

I love 'Shattered Glass.' It's one of my favorite movies. I think it's just brilliant.

I saw 'A Clockwork Orange' when I was 11. When you watch 'Clockwork Orange' at 11, it either totally scares you from watching movies, or you want to become a filmmaker. I was the latter.

Duncan Sheik and I are trucking along on 'American Psycho,' which is sort of the anti-Superman, you know? But it's a lot of fun, too, in a much, much darker way, obviously.

One of the things about the '70s films I love - the films 'Nightcrawler' is being compared to, like, 'Taxi Driver' - is that they never put their flawed characters into any one box.

In 'Se7en' and 'Fight Club,' Fincher proved his suave mastery of film violence; in Zodiac, his way of clarifying the many clues in a murder thriller. As he showed in 'The Social Network,' the director also knows that no wound is more toxic than a friend's betrayal.

I love J. G. Ballard. I love authors who take the world as we know it and just tweak one thing and say, 'What if the world were like this?'

'Black Mirror' obviously has its own universe, with a very strong fingerprint and strong themes, and I was intrigued on reading. It's such a powerful piece of storytelling.

Fred Moten is a poet I really love because he changes who is telling the poem all the time.

Badlapur' is a drama, a character-driven story. It is not so much about plot.

I don't usually like teen novels written in the present tense, particularly those told from a first-person viewpoint. Too many writers seem to believe that using either or both devices automatically imbues their stories with deep seriousness and a contemporary feel.

Some of my favourite shows are 'Black Mirror,' a dystopian thriller show called '3%,' 'Ozark,' 'Tyrant,' etc.

There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening.

I've always written in first person. It gives the readers more insight.

Henry James would have been vastly improved as a novelist by a few whiffs of the Chicago stockyard.

... A CLOCKWORK ORANGE- and I said: 'That's a fair gloopy title. Who ever heard of a clockwork orange?' Then I read a malenky bit out loud in a sort of very high type preaching goloss: '- The attempt to impose upon a man, a creature of growth and capable of sweetness, to ooze juicily at the last round the bearded lips of God, to attempt to impose, I say, laws and conditions appropriate to a mechanical creation, against this I raise my swordpen-

Liberty, according to my metaphysics, is an intellectual quality, an attribute that belongs not to fate nor chance. Neither possesses it, neither is capable of it. There is nothing moral or immoral in the idea of it. The definition of it is a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and choice and power; it can elect between objects, indifferent in point of morality, neither morally good nor morally evil.

My work holds up the mirror to hypocrisy, which puts me in a tradition of American writing that reaches back to Nathaniel Hawthorne.

It would be difficult to determine whether the age is growing better or worse; for I think our plays are growing like sermons, and our sermons like plays.