Jeffrey Eugenides Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• She thought a writer should work harder writing a book than she did reading it.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Book, Reading, Writing

  Jeffrey Eugenides (2011). “The Marriage Plot: A Novel”, p.42, Macmillan

• I tell my students that when you write, you should pretend you’re writing the best letter you ever wrote to the smartest friend you have. That way, you’ll never dumb things down. You won’t have to explain things that don’t need explaining. You’ll assume an intimacy and a natural shorthand, which is good because readers are smart and don’t wish to be condescended to.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Smart, Writing, Dumb

• No matter how long your've been at it, you always start from scratch.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Writing, Long, Scratches

• But maybe the Charm Bracelets understood more about life than I did. From an early age they knew what little value the world placed in books, and so didn't waste their time with them. Whereas I, even now, persist in believing that these black marks on white paper bear the greatest significance, that if I keep writing, I might be able to catch the rainbow of consciousness in a jar.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Believe, Book, Writing

• They're just memories now. Time to write them off.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Memories, Writing

• She could become a spinster, like Emily Dickinson, writing poems full of dashes and brilliance, and never gaining weight.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Writing, Weight, Spinsters

  Jeffrey Eugenides (2011). “The Marriage Plot: A Novel”, p.13, Macmillan

• The daily act of writing remains as demanding and maddening as it was before, and the pleasure you get from writing - rare but profound - remains at the true heart of the enterprise. On their best days, writers all over the world are winning Pulitzers, all alone in their studios, with no one watching.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Writing, Heart, Winning

• I'm not really an autobiographical writer, though I use lots of stuff from my life to make my stories seem real. But when I actually write about myself, I get very confused.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Confused, Real, Writing

  "A 'Marriage Plot' Full Of Intellectual Angst". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. October 11, 2011.

• Basically you come up with the fictional idea and you start writing that story, but then in order to write it and to make it seem real, you sometimes put your own memories in. Even if it's a character that's very different from you.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Memories, Real, Writing

  "Jeffrey Eugenides on writing in C major". Interview with Carolyn Kellogg, latimesblogs.latimes.com. October 29, 2011.

• I have a very beautiful room in my house... It's glass on three sides, and you'd think that's the perfect place to write. Somehow in that nice room I feel too exposed, and... I'm too distracted by things going on, so I end up writing in a not-very-nice office bedroom.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Beautiful, Nice, Writing

• Jacques Derrida is a very important thinker and philosopher who has made serious contributions to both philosophy and literary criticism. Roland Barthes is the one I feel most affinity for, and Michel Foucault, well, his writing influenced my novel, 'Middlesex.'

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Philosophy, Writing, Criticism

• I have a lot of novels that I haven't finished. I usually get 150 pages in and I realize it's not going anywhere. I don't publish everything I write. I must have six unfinished novels at least.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Writing, Pages, Six

• I was aware that you weren't supposed to write about suburbia, that it was undignified in some way, the subject matter not momentous enough. And so, for a long time, that kept me from writing about it. But once I began, I realized it was just as interesting as anywhere else.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Writing, Long, Interesting

• If love were endless, if it were on tap, it wouldn't hit us the way it does. And we certainly wouldn't write about it.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Writing, Doe, Way

• I remember liking to write stories pretty early on. In fourth or fifth grade, they would give us the beginning of a story, and we were supposed to finish it. I remember liking that. But I didn't think about deciding to become a writer until high school at about the age of 16.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Writing, School, Thinking

  Interview with Juliette Lewis, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 24, 2011.

• That's the way I will write characters, put a fair amount of myself in them, and then everyone else who was like that person, I will pick and choose.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Writing, Character, Way

  "Interview: Jeffrey Eugenides on writing in C major". Interview with Carolyn Kellogg, latimesblogs.latimes.com. October 29, 2011.

• I think there's a real connection between acting and writing novels because the way I write characters has a little bit to do with the method acting that I was taught in high school and college.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Real, Writing, School

  Interview with Juliette Lewis, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 24, 2011.

• I spend most of every day writing. I like to write every day if I can. I don't start extremely early.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Work, Writing, Ifs

• If I write a character, instead of looking from the outside, like maybe a journalist would, trying to describe them physically and figuring out what kind of things they might be interested in or have in their house, I don't really do it that way. I try to feel what it would be like to be inside this person, to be them.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Writing, Character, House

  Interview with Juliette Lewis, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 24, 2011.

• Novelists are always resisting autobiographical readings of their work, because they know how false those can be.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Reading, Writing, Novelists

  "Interview: Jeffrey Eugenides on writing in C major". Interview with Carolyn Kellogg, latimesblogs.latimes.com. October 29, 2011.

• There's a kind of acting that goes on in my head when I'm writing a character where I put myself in their place.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Writing, Character, Acting

  Interview with Juliette Lewis, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 24, 2011.

• I approach writing female characters the same why I approach writing male characters. I never think I'm writing about women, I think I'm writing about one woman, one person. And I try to imagine what she is like, and endow her with a lot of my own thoughts and history.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Writing, Character, Thinking

  "Jeffery Eugenides Discusses New Book: ‘The Marriage Plot’". Interview With Madeleine Crum, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 12, 2011.

• The ideas for my books come about in two ways. There can be an intellectual idea that seems to be the reason for writing the book. [...] The other motive is unconscious. There is something deeply psychological and emotional that draws me to the material in the first place.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Book, Writing, Emotional

  Interview with Juliette Lewis, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 24, 2011.

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