What he needed was to find fifty more people like him, who had stopped being themselves without realizing it.
Jennifer EganI loved every minute of my childhood - sunbathing on the fire escape, digging for buried treasure in the back yard, pulling alewives out of the sand... Then it was all taken away from me. I came back every summer to visit my father until I was 18, but I was always the outsider.
Jennifer EganBe willing and unafraid to write badly, because often the bad stuff...forms a base on which to build something better.
Jennifer EganI had this idea that I could hire myself out as a person to go on archeological digs and dig, without any training! I actually wrote to a number of archeology departments and offered up my services.
Jennifer EganI havenโt had trouble with writerโs block. I think itโs because my process involves writing very badly. My first drafts are filled with lurching, clichรฉd writing, outright flailing around. Writing that doesnโt have a good voice or any voice. But then there will be good moments. It seems writerโs block is often a dislike of writing badly and waiting for writing better to happen.
Jennifer EganAnd for an instant he would remember Naples: sitting with Sasha in her tiny room; the jolt of surprise and delight he'd felt when the sun finally dropped into the center of her window and was captured inside her circle of wire. Now he turned to her, grinning. Her hair and face were aflame with orange light. "See," Sasha muttered, eyeing the sun. "It's mine.
Jennifer Egan