Latest Jay McInerney Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• 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

• The 20th century saw far greater catastrophes than September 11th, as bad as it was, and they didn't render literature or art or music irrelevant. In fact, I think that literature and art help us to understand - sometimes they provide narratives and metaphors for understanding history, for understanding recent catastrophes.

  Jay McInerney

  Art, Thinking, Understanding

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• 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

• 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

• 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

• Most all of the writers I admired when I was in my teens and twenties died young. Fitzgerald lived the longest. He was 44. Dylan Thomas was 39. And then once you're approaching 40, you suddenly think, "Well, maybe I would like to live longer than Fitzgerald or Thomas."

  Jay McInerney

  Thinking, Dylan

  Interview with Christopher Bollen, www.interviewmagazine.com. July 21, 2016.

• The only thing worse for smoking than drinking is quitting drinking. Because then it's the only thing you can do.

  Jay McInerney

  Drinking, Smoking, Quitting

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com