Jay McInerney Quotes

Quotes about:

• I think men talk to women so they can sleep with them and women sleep with men so they can talk to them.

  Jay McInerney

  Love, Life, Witty

  Twitter post from Jan 09, 2013

  128 Copy quote

• The capacity for friendship is God's way of apologizing for our families.

  Jay McInerney

  Friendship, Family, Inspiring

  Jay McInerney (2011). “The Last of the Savages”, p.3, Vintage

  22 Copy quote

• I don't want to have my life fall apart for my work.

  Jay McInerney

  Fall, Want, Falling Apart

  4 Copy quote

• There's a socialist bias to the consensus of the literary world: a '30s mentality that says factory workers are more worthy of our attention.

  Jay McInerney

  Attention, World, Factory Workers

  "The interview: Jay McInerney" by Rachel Cooke, www.theguardian.com. July 11, 2009.

  14 Copy quote

• Sometimes I think the difference between what we want and what we're afraid of is about the width of an eyelash.

  Jay McInerney

  Fear, Thinking, Eyelashes

  Jay McInerney (2009). “How It Ended”, p.28, Vintage

  24 Copy quote

• Reading a novel is just a much more involving and intimate experience than the act of watching a film. I mean, you literally get inside of a novelist's head, and you invest many hours to do so.

  Jay McInerney

  Reading, Mean, Film

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  12 Copy quote

• The most interesting things that happen in my books are usually the things that arise spontaneously, the things that surprise me.

  Jay McInerney

  Book, Interesting, Surprise

  "Novelist Jay McInerney on Getting Your Novel Underway". Interview with Anne Bowling, www.writersdigest.com. March 11, 2008.

  9 Copy quote

• Things happen, people change,' is what Amanda said. For her that covered it. You wanted an explanation, and ending that would assign blame and dish up justice. You considered violence and you considered reconciliation . But what you are left with is a premonition of the way your life will fade behind you, like a book you have read too quickly, leaving a dwindling trail of images and emotions, until all you can remember is a name.

  Jay McInerney

  Life, Book, Names

  Jay McInerney (2011). “Bright Lights, Big City”, p.127, Vintage

  12 Copy quote

• Bottles of wine aren't like paintings. At some point you have to consume them. The object in life is to die with no bottles of wine in your cellar. To drink your last bottle of wine and go to sleep that night and not wake up.

  Jay McInerney

  Wine, Sleep, Night

  10 Copy quote

• When you catch yourself lying to your therapist, you know it's a waste of money.

  Jay McInerney

  Lying, Waste, Therapists

  4 Copy quote

• I think it's dangerous to think you know what you're writing. I usually don't know, and usually I just discover it in the course of writing. I envy those writers who can outline a beginning, a middle, and end. Fitzgerald supposedly did it. John Irving does. Bret Easton Ellis does. But for me, the writing itself is the process of discovery. I can't see all that far ahead.

  Jay McInerney

  Writing, Thinking, Envy

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  8 Copy quote

• You have friends who actually care about you and speak the language of the inner self. You have avoided them of late. Your soul is as disheveled as your apartment, and until you can clean it up a little you don't want to invite anyone inside.

  Jay McInerney

  Self, Soul, Care

  Jay McInerney (2011). “Bright Lights, Big City”, p.32, Vintage

  11 Copy quote

• I think, when I'm writing, I have a more clinical view than I do when I'm reading. I like pretending to be God and basically determining the fate of my characters. But as a reader, I'm a sucker. I'm very sentimental. I get upset when people that I like die. And yet I have killed off characters in my books quite heartlessly, and sometimes found that readers were very upset by it.

  Jay McInerney

  Reading, Book, Writing

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• We've been hearing about the death of the novel ever since the day after Don Quixote was published.

  Jay McInerney

  Hearing, Novel

  "The uses of invention" by Jay McInerney, www.theguardian.com. September 16, 2005.

  7 Copy quote

• Everything becomes symbol and irony when you've been betrayed

  Jay McInerney

  Betrayed, Irony, Symbols

  Jay McInerney (2014). “Bright Lights, Big City”, p.54, A&C Black

  4 Copy quote

• I was fortunate to get a lot of mileage out of my vices . . . The point is not to be debilitated by your pleasures. Maybe I have lucky genes or something but I've never been truly addicted to anything, except pleasure in general.

  Jay McInerney

  Vices, Lucky, Pleasure

  " Jay McInerney: 'I was fortunate to get a lot of mileage out of my vices'" by William Skidelsky, www.theguardian.com. May 19, 2012.

  7 Copy quote

• I realized that I might not ever make it as a writer, that it might be because I wasn't good enough, or that it might be because the odds were just too long.

  Jay McInerney

  Odds, Long, Might

  6 Copy quote

• The only sensible approach is not to take it too seriously. What counts is the writing.

  Jay McInerney

  Writing, Sensible, Approach

  6 Copy quote

• You described the feeling you’d always had of being misplaced, of always standing to one side of yourself, of watching yourself in the world even as you were being in the world, and wondering if this was how everyone felt. That you always believed that other people had a clearer idea of what they were doing, and didn’t worry quite so much about why.

  Jay McInerney

  Ideas, Worry, People

  4 Copy quote

• I like the fact that I'm living in the world rather than in a university.

  Jay McInerney

  World, Facts, University

  14 Copy quote

• What I'm nostalgic for is the idea of an edge in New York. There used to be these fringes of the city where civilization sort of ended, and therefore young people could live cheaply, or open nightclubs or art galleries, or even squat. That fringe moved out to New Jersey and Brooklyn. The whole idea of the metropolis is the centralization of like-minded souls, and when the central real estate becomes too expensive, the dreamers, the young poets, and the artists will go elsewhere.

  Jay McInerney

  Art, Real, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  5 Copy quote

• A modest critique of an age in which an actor is the President, in which fashion models are asked for their opinions, in which getting into a nightclub is seen as a significant human achievement.

  Jay McInerney

  Fashion, America, Achievement

  4 Copy quote

• There aren't many shy writers left.

  Jay McInerney

  Shy, Left

  4 Copy quote

• Add anchovies to almost anything, in moderation, and it will taste better.

  Jay McInerney

  Add, Taste, Moderation

  4 Copy quote

• You keep thinking that with practice you will eventually get the knack of enjoying superficial encounters, that you will stop looking for the universal solvent, stop grieving. You will learn to compound happiness out of small increments of mindless pleasure.

  Jay McInerney

  Thinking, Grieving, Practice

  Jay McInerney (2011). “Bright Lights, Big City”, p.52, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

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