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Jay McInerney [1955-0] American

Rank: 106
Writer, Novelist

John Barrett "Jay" McInerney, Jr. is an American novelist. His novels include Bright Lights, Big City, Ransom, Story of My Life, Brightness Falls, and The Last of the Savages.

Imagination, Romantic

Quote	Tags	Rank
A creative writing program is only as good as its teachers, and I was fortunate in having two great writers as mentors.		101
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.		102
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.		103
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.		104
Eat, drink and remarry is my motto.		105
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.		106
The most interesting things that happen in my books are usually the things that arise spontaneously, the things that surprise me.		107
I like the fact that I'm living in the world rather than in a university.		108
'Socialist' is the nastiest thing you can say about an American politician in some quarters.		109
We've been hearing about the death of the novel ever since the day after Don Quixote was published.		110
You know, I'm always surprised when I read profiles, and they make me sound so jaded. I am so not jaded.		111
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.		112
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.		113
My former wife is a very eccentric woman, which is why I still love her.		114
Mine is not an autonomous imagination.	Imagination	115
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.		116
I'm a romantic; you have to be to marry four times.	Romantic	117
Love is the eternal quest: almost everyone wants to love and be loved.		118
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.		119
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.		120
Yeah, 'Gossip Girl' is a good show. It's a real New York show, like 'Sex and the City.'		121
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.		122
I envy those writers who outline their novels, who know where they're going. But I find writing is a process of discovery.		123
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.		124
I love to imagine inside the head of a woman.		125
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.		126
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.		201
There is a type of writer that can happily bury themselves in the country and dig very deep, but I'm not like that.		202
Sometimes I think everything I touch turns into a Page Six item.		203
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.		204
Anybody who becomes a movie star becomes successful at projecting a certain image to the public.		205
There aren't many shy writers left.		206
I don't want to have my life fall apart for my work.		207
It's the cynics who never get married.		208
When you catch yourself lying to your therapist, you know it's a waste of money.		209
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.		210
Most of the people I write about have been ambitious outlanders who have been attracted to New York from other parts of the world.		211
Add anchovies to almost anything, in moderation, and it will taste better.		212

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