Jay McInerney Quotes & Sayings

Something changed. Somewhere along the line you stopped accelerating. — Jay McInerney

Under the spell of alcohol your differences recede. — Jay McInerney

If it's red, French, costs too much, and tastes like the water that's left in the vase after the flowers have died and rotted, it's probably Burgundy. — Jay McInerney

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

Did you know that ninety percent of your average household dust is composed of human epidermal matter? That's skin, to you.
Perhaps this explains your sense of Amanda's omnipresence. She has left her skin behind. — Jay McInerney

The level of the room keeps changing. All of the surfaces swell and recede with oceanic rhytm. You are not quite all right. You are somewhat wrong. — Jay McInerney

Alex hadn't been clubbing in several years. After he and Lydia moved in together, the clubs lost their appeal. Now he felt the return of the old thrill, the anticipation of the hunt - the sense that the night held secrets bound to be unveiled before it was over. Tasha was talking about someone in New York whom Alex was supposed to know. "The last time I saw him, he just kept banging his head against the wall, and I said to him, 'Michael, you've really got to — Jay McInerney

hate being alone, but when I wake up in some guy's bed with dry come on the sheets underneath me and he's snoring like a garbage truck, I go, let me out of here. I slip out and crawl around the floor groping for my clothes, trying to untangle his blue jeans from mine, my bra from his Jockeys - Skip wears boxers, of course - and trying to be quiet at the same time, then slide out the door laughing like a seal escaping from the zoo and race home to where Jeannie has been warming the bed all night. Jumping in between the sheets and she wakes up and — Jay McInerney

There aren't many shy writers left. — Jay McInerney

The problem is, for some reason you think you are going to meet the kind of girl who is not the kind of girl who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. — Jay McInerney

Delia's arms were inscribed with a grid of self- inflicted wounds, an intricate text of self-loathing — Jay McInerney

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

A pockmarked boy with a scraggy ponytail and four tiny rings in his right ear leaned against the wall of the armory, holding his dog on a leash, a sign hanging from his neck: PLEASE FEEL FREE TO PET MY DOG. IT MAY MAKE YOU FEEL BETTER. — Jay McInerney

He belonged to the new breed of male epicureans who viewed cooking as a competitive sport, and pursued it with the same avidity that others had for fly-fishing or golf, with the attendant fetishization of the associated gadgetry and equipment. He — Jay McInerney

I don't think I found my voice until I reached New York. I suppose it's possible I would have had some kind of different literary career if I had not discovered New York. — Jay McInerney

Your brain at this moment is composed of brigades of tiny Bolivian soldiers. They are tired and muddy from their long march through the night. There are holes in their boots and they are hungry. They need to be fed. The need the Bolivian Marching Powder. — Jay McInerney

You are the kind of guy who always hopes for a miracle at the last minute. — Jay McInerney

'Socialist' is the nastiest thing you can say about an American politician in some quarters. — Jay McInerney

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

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

When the train begins to move they return to their Posts and their private sorrows. — Jay McInerney

This is shaping up even worse than you anticipated. Still, you feel a measure of detachment, as if you had suffered everything already and this were just a flashback. You wish that you had paid more attention when a woman you met at Heartbreak told you about Zen meditation. Think of all of this as an illusion. She can't hurt you. Nothing can hurt the samurai wh enters combat fully resolved to die. You have already accepted the inevitability of termination, as they say. Still, you'd rather not have to sit through this. — Jay McInerney

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

There is a shabby nobility in failing all by yourself. — Jay McInerney

It's the Abstract Expressionist approach to publishing. Throw ink at paper. Hope for pattern to emerge. — Jay McInerney

I like the fact that I'm living in the world rather than in a university. — Jay McInerney

I feel that there's a lot of would-be guardians of the culture who think that high-minded literary purpose and the life that gets chronicled in the gossip columns, that these two things are incompatible. — Jay McInerney

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

He insisted on a single trade secret: that you had to survive, find some quiet, and work hard every day. — Jay McInerney

Such moments are too often lost, the private interludes between the tribal gatherings, the transit between destinations, when the city becomes an intimate landscape, a secret shared by two. This was once their neighborhood and she wants to reclaim it for a little while, to walk past the apartment where they spent so much of their lives, even if it makes her sad thinking of all that transpired there, and all that's lost. It makes her melancholy to imagine that she might never be here again, that these blocks, their former haunts, and their old building will outlast them; that the city is supremely indifferent to their transit through its arteries, and to their ultimate destination. For now, she wants just to be in between. She knows that later it won't be the party she will remember so much as this, the walk with her husband in the crisp autumn air, bathed in the yellow metropolitan light spilling from thousands of windows, this suspended moment of anticipation before arrival. — Jay McInerney

Three months later - a Jewish girl having in the meantime explained the fundamentals of kosher dining - he returned to the B & H Dairy Bar, and when, finally, the old man asked him if he'd ever been in a restaurant, Jeff answered, "I don't know - you ever worked in one?" After that he was a New Yorker. Cruising — Jay McInerney

Publishers send me a lot of first novels because my first novel was the defining novel of my career, and I guess a lot of people want my benediction or something. — Jay McInerney

There is a type of writer that can happily bury themselves in the country and dig very deep, but I'm not like that. — Jay McInerney

Most of the people I write about have been ambitious outlanders who have been attracted to New York from other parts of the world. — Jay McInerney

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

You never stopped thinking of yourself as a writer biding his time in the Department of Factual Verification. But between the job and the life there wasn't much time left over for emotion recollected in tranquillity. — Jay McInerney

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

You know, I'm always surprised when I read profiles, and they make me sound so jaded. I am so not jaded. — Jay McInerney

Most novelists I know went through a period of intense self-examination and self-loathing after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. I certainly did. — Jay McInerney

It's the cynics who never get married. — Jay McInerney

Eat, drink and remarry is my motto. — Jay McInerney

The capacity for friendship is God's way of apologizing for our families. — Jay McInerney

I always hope people will like me, and I'm always afraid they will think I'm a fraud. I try harder than perhaps I should to make people like me, then it backfires. They think I'm a buffoon. — Jay McInerney

Mine is not an autonomous imagination. — Jay McInerney

I'm a romantic; you have to be to marry four times. — Jay McInerney

Your heartbreak is just another version of the same old story. — Jay McInerney

Anybody who becomes a movie star becomes successful at projecting a certain image to the public. — Jay McInerney

Your presence here is is only a matter of conducting an experiment in limits, reminding yourself of what you aren't. — Jay McInerney

I don't want to have my life fall apart for my work. — Jay McInerney

Tad's mission in life is to have more fun than anyone else in New York City, and this involves a lot of moving around, since there is always the likelihood that where you aren't is more fun than where you are. — Jay McInerney

I love to imagine inside the head of a woman. — Jay McInerney

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

From the window, Luke looked out over the water towers of Fifth Avenue to the park, studying the senescence of the daylight, which seemed almost viscous, ready to coagulate - trying to register that perfect moment of transition from day to evening, that instant when the light, in dying, was most nearly itself. — Jay McInerney

Love is recreational, it needs not be aspirational — Jay McInerney

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

I certainly think that the publishing houses have to learn more about this informal network of literary blogging and get over the idea that sending an author on a book tour - to Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles - is a successful model anymore. — Jay McInerney

You know, Greenwich Village was the traditional bohemia of New York. I wish I could say that was entirely true now. It's, uh ... changed. It's now got, God help us, investment bankers and journalists, but it's still a very beautiful part of New York. — Jay McInerney

You feel that if only you could make yourself sit down at a typewriter you could give shape to what seems merely a chain reaction of pointless disasters. — Jay McInerney

Everything becomes symbol and irony when you've been betrayed — Jay McInerney

The definition of gumbo is almost as slippery as that of Creole. Just as gumbo can contain pretty much any kind of meat or seafood, Creole is a vague and inclusive term for native New Orleanians, who may be black or white, depending on whom you're asking. — Jay McInerney

they'd followed their best instincts and based their lives on the premise that money couldn't buy happiness, learning only gradually the many varieties of unhappiness it might have staved off. Russell — Jay McInerney

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

Taste ... is a matter of taste (Tad Allagash) — Jay McInerney

I envy those writers who outline their novels, who know where they're going. But I find writing is a process of discovery. — Jay McInerney

Add anchovies to almost anything, in moderation, and it will taste better. — Jay McInerney

I'm afraid that - not necessarily deliberately, but consistently - I've made a kind of laboratory out of my life, where I mix the stuff in the test tubes to create explosions - possibly resulting in interesting by-products. I mean, not deliberately - I'd be crazy to deliberately do that - or maybe not. — Jay McInerney

I think a lot of the people who write about me think that if they had to write fewer interviews then they would transcribe their life-story and it would be a big success. Or should be. — Jay McInerney

Tim Thornton's portrait of a pop culture obsession is so convincing that one can't help wishing that his fictional alt rock band actually existed, or suspecting that they did. The Alternative Hero is a weirdly compelling portrait of fanatic fandom which reads like High Fidelity at high volume. — Jay McInerney

Great minds sink alike, right? — Jay McInerney

Suffering is supposed to be the raw stuff of art. — Jay McInerney

Love is the eternal quest: almost everyone wants to love and be loved. — Jay McInerney

I've been interested in writing and storytelling since I learned to read, but it wasn't until I read Dylan Thomas, when I was 14, that I became interested in language itself, and saw it as more than a transparent medium for a story. — Jay McInerney

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

You have a bad memory for details. You can tell her the date of the Spanish Armada, but you couldn't even guess at the balance of your checkbook. — Jay McInerney

A creative writing program is only as good as its teachers, and I was fortunate in having two great writers as mentors. — Jay McInerney

I remain a fan of my friend Bret Easton Ellis's 'American Psycho.' I think as a book about New York in the '80s it was pretty excellent. — Jay McInerney

Sometimes I think everything I touch turns into a Page Six item. — Jay McInerney

I'd like to have the kind of house someday where a carousel horse wouldn't be out of place in the living room. — Jay McInerney

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

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

My former wife is a very eccentric woman, which is why I still love her. — Jay McInerney

It's like, you can't trust anybody, and if somebody you know doesn't fuck you over it's just because the price of selling you down the river was never high enough. — Jay McInerney

Memories lurk like dustballs in the backs of drawers. The stereo is a special model that plays only music fraught with poignant associations. — Jay McInerney

Taste is a matter of taste. — Jay McInerney

I'm about to take a shower because I smell like an all-nighter, then I think I'll take a bath so I can have a faucet orgasm. After all, I didn't get any last night. A faucet orgasm is pretty much the same principle as a bidet orgasm except upside-down. When we were growing up we had bidets in all the bathrooms and when I was about ten I accidentally discovered one of the things they were good for. After that I used to spend hours on the damn thing. This dump we rent doesn't have a bidet so I have to get in the tub and slide up toward the front, running my legs up the wall on either side of the faucet. Turn on the warm water and smile. Actually, you've got to get the water temperature just right first or you could really be in for a nasty shock. I've made that mistake a few times. This time I get it just right and I come three times before I get around to actually taking a bath. — Jay McInerney

The night has already turned on that imperceptible pivot where two A.M. changes to six A.M. You know this moment has come and gone, but you are not yet willing to concede that you have crossed the line beyond which all is gratuitous damage and the palsy of unraveled nerve endings. Somewhere back there you could have cut your losses, but your rode past that moment on a comet trail of white powder and now you are trying to hang on to the rush. — Jay McInerney

Tears come to your eyes, and you feel such a rush of tenderness and pity that you stop beside a lamppost and hang on for support. — Jay McInerney

The candor was infectious. It spread back to the beginning of your life. You tried to tell her, as well as you could, what it was like being you. 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

The girl with the shaved head has a scar tattooed on her scalp. It looks like a long, sutured gash. You tell her it is very realistic. She takes this as a compliment and thanks you. You meant as opposed to romantic. "I could use one of those right over my heart," you say. — Jay McInerney

If being a spokesman for a generation is a fleeting occupation, being a symbol of an era is downright dangerous for anyone who has the bad luck to outlive it. — Jay McInerney

Eventually you ascend the stairs to the street. You think of Plato's pilgrims climbing out of the cave, from the shadow world of appearances toward things as they really are, and you wonder if it is possible to change in this life. Being with a philosopher makes you think. — Jay McInerney

I'd urge you to try German Riesling because it's delicious, but I fear you'll be more impressed if I tell you it's cutting-edge. That, after all, is what we want to know
what's now and happening. (Do you really think clunky square-toed shoes make your feet look better than those with slimming, tapered toes? You just wear them because that's what fashion dictates, you slut.) — Jay McInerney

I don't think I've left a trail of weeping women in my wake. I mean, the number of serious relationships I've had has not been into double digits. — Jay McInerney

Here you are again. All messed up and no place to go. — Jay McInerney

Yeah, 'Gossip Girl' is a good show. It's a real New York show, like 'Sex and the City.' — Jay McInerney

Your head is pounding with voices of confession and revelation. You followed the rails of white powder across the mirror in pursuit of a point of convergence where everything was cross-referenced according to a master code. For a second, you felt terrific. You were coming to grips. Then the coke ran out; as you hoovered the last line, you saw yourself hideously close-up with a rolled twenty sticking out of your nose. The goal is receding. Whatever it was. You can't get everything straight in one night. — Jay McInerney

You are a republic of voices tonight. Unfortunately, that republic is Italy. — Jay McInerney

You keep meaning to cultivate an expertise in spectator sport. More and more you realize that sports trivia is crucial to male camaraderie. You keenly feel your ignorance. You are locked out of the largest fraternity in the country. — Jay McInerney

And as he feels himself falling asleep he has an insight he believes is important, which he hopes he will remember in the morning, although it is one of those thoughts that seldom survive translation to the language of daylight hours — Jay McInerney

Sometimes you feel like the only man in the city without group affiliation. — Jay McInerney