Look At Me Jennifer Egan Quotes & Sayings

My father loved me so much that he did not want me to be a laborer or anything. I don't know if it's the right thing to do - push your kids into something and then stay on them until they do it. Let them pick what they want to do. — Joe Pesci

Sasha tipped back her head to look at him. She made a point of doing this now and then, just to remind Coz that she wasn't an idiot - she knew the question had a right answer. She and Coz were collaborators, writing a story whose end had already been determined: she would get well. — Jennifer Egan

Anyone who says it's easy to self-publish a book is either lying or doing a shitty job. — Nan McCarthy

But try as Phoebe might to blend with her peers, it felt like bluffing, mouthing the words to a song she'd never been taught, always a beat late. At best, she fooled them. But the chance to distinguish herself, impress them in the smallest way, was lost. At her vast public high school Phoebe had felt reduced to a pidgin version of herself, as during "conversations" in French class - Where is the cat? Have you seen the cat? Look! Pierre gives the cat a bath - such was her level of fluency while discussing bongs or bands or how fucked-up someone was at a party. — Jennifer Egan

This vision tumbled over Phoebe with the force of revelation: she would stand somewhere and look back, she would live a life. — Jennifer Egan

'Goon Squad' took about three years to write and that's the short end. My second novel, 'Look at Me,' took six years. — Jennifer Egan

If I had a view like this to look down on every day, I would have the energy and inspiration to conquer the world. The trouble is, when you most need such a view, no one gives it to you. — Jennifer Egan

I know you don't think he's good enough for me, but then you don't think any man is good enough for me. — Lorraine Heath

I'm like America " he said.
Stephanie swung around to look at him unnerved. "What are you talking about " she said. "Are you off your meds "
"Our hands are dirty " Jules said. — Jennifer Egan

One has to have illustrated links with the fair to middling ranks of reality I should think in order for something like Christmas to really work out otherwise it just seems odd and sort of accusatory and one feels turbulent and extrinsic and can't wait for it all to slump backwards into its shambolic velvet envelope and shuffle off down the hill. — Claire-Louise Bennett

He seemed to savor telling the story, as if he'd memorized its details especially for her: how three or four days after she and Lulu had left the general's redoubt, the photographers began showing up, first one or two whom the soldiers ferreted out of the jungle and imprisoned, then more, too many to capture or even count-they were superb hiders, crouching like monkeys in the trees, burying themselves i shallow pits camouflaging inside bunches of leaves. Assassins has never managed to locate the general with any precision, but the photographers made it look easy: scores of them surging across the border without visas, curled in baskets and wine casks, rolled up in rugs, juddering over unpaved roads in the backs of trucks and eventually surrounding the general's enclave, which he didn't dare leave. — Jennifer Egan

I do want to get married. It's a nice idea. Though I think husbands are like tattoos
you should wait until you come across something you want on your body for the rest of your life instead of just wandering into a tattoo parlor on some idle Sunday and saying, 'I feel like I should have one of these suckers by now. I'll take a thorny rose and a "MOM" anchor, please. No, not that one
the big one. — Sloane Crosley

He doesn't know who he's making love to, I would think, and panic would slash through me until I reminded myself that it was over now, a freakish aberration not to be repeated. It was Hansen who first made me aware of shadow selves. He would lie in bed watching me for whole minutes, and I would look back into his eyes and wonder, What does he see? How can he not see the truth? Where is it hidden? It made me ask, when I looked at other people, what possible selves they were hiding behind the strange rubber masks of their faces. I could nearly always find one, if I watched for long enough. It became the only one I was interested in seeing. — Jennifer Egan

I have seen the future and it's like the present, only longer. — Dan Quisenberry

Sometimes I imagine myself looking back on right now and I think like where will I be standing when I look back Will right now look like the beginning of a great life or ... or what — Jennifer Egan

The monkey's face had more emotions than a human's: curiosity, pity, exhaustion, like he'd already seen too much. Danny had to look away. — Jennifer Egan

It is technically impossible for a man to look better in a Speedo than in swim trunks. — Jennifer Egan

You said you were a fairy princess
You said you were a shooting star
You said we'd go to Bora Bora
Now look at where the fuck we are — Jennifer Egan

At night, the house thick with sleep, she would peer out her bedroom window at the trees and sky and feel the presence of a mystery. Some possibility that included her
separate from her present life and without its limitations. A secret. Riding in the car with her father, she would look out at other cars full of people she'd never seen, any one of whom she might someday meet and love, and would feel the world holding her making its secret plans. — Jennifer Egan

'Look at Me' started with Rockford, Illinois and New York and the question of how much image culture was changing our inner lives. That's an abstract idea; you don't think that's going to be a rocking work of fiction, but it seemed to fuse in a way that was interesting. — Jennifer Egan

Style is based on limitations. — John Hartford

Dad was certainly a free spirit and had his own ways. He was very proud of my golf achievements but more proud of the person I've turned into. He brought me up to lead a very balanced life. — Luke Donald

The book that is the closest genetically to 'Goon Squad' is 'Look at Me.' It has the futuristic element - although, freakishly, almost every aspect I invented has come to pass in some way, including the terrorist who fantasies about blowing up the World Trade Centre. That was extremely uncomfortable. The book came out on the week of 9/11. — Jennifer Egan

The music industry is an interesting lens through which to look at change, because it has had such a difficult time adjusting to the digital age. — Jennifer Egan