some mornings... I sit at the kitchen table shaking salt into the hairs on my arm, and a feeling shoves up in me: it's finished. Everything went past without me.
Jennifer EganRead
I guess my comfort zone as a writer is diametrically opposed to my comfort zone as a human being.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the contrast between a writer's creative freedom and personal comfort.
Jennifer Egan emphasizes the dichotomy between her role as a writer, where she ventures into new and challenging ideas and expressions, and her personal life, where she might prefer stability and familiarity. This tension reflects the common struggle many creatives feel, balancing their imagination and desires with everyday existence.
Themes
Comfort ZoneWritingCreativityHuman Behavior
In practice
Example use cases
In a writing workshop, to encourage participants to explore new styles, you might say, 'Remember, as Jennifer Egan suggests, our comfort zones as writers are often different from who we are as individuals.'
More from Jennifer Egan
All quotes βI think there are ways in which we censor ourselves; that's the most dangerous kind of censorship - that's how hegemony works.
Jennifer EganRead
I find myself thinking more about the past as I get older... maybe because there's just more of it to think about. At the same time, I'm less haunted by it than I was as a younger person. I guess that's probably the ideal: to reach a point where you have access to all of your memories, but you don't feel victimized by them.
Jennifer EganRead
I think, for one thing, all of us remember those teenage years and those songs that we fell in love with and the music scene that we were part of. So, in a certain way, music cuts through time like almost nothing else. You know, it makes us feel like we're back in an earlier moment.
Jennifer EganRead
And Alex understood that Scotty Hausmann did not exist. He was a word casing in human form: a shell whose essence has vanished.
Jennifer EganRead
We live in a moment and a culture when reading is really endangered. There's simply no way to write well, though, if you're not reading well.
Jennifer EganRead
Similar quotes
The principle of Creative Limitations calls for freedom within a circle of obstacles and restricted boundaries. Talent is like a muscle: without something to push against, it atrophies. So we deliberately put obstacles in our path - barriers that will inspire us. We disciple ourselves as to what to do, while we're boundless as to how to do it.
Robert MckeeRead
We think about the world in all ways we experience it ; we think visually, we think in sign, we think kinesthetically, we think in abstract term, we think in movement. Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value.
Ken RobinsonRead
Ideas are cheap. Always be passionate about ideas and communicating those ideas and discoveries to others in the things you make.
Charles EamesRead
Doubt not, O poet, but persist. Say 'It is in me, and shall out.' Stand there, balked and dumb, stuttering and stammering, hissed and hooted, stand and strive, until at last rage draw out of thee that dream-power which every night shows thee is thine own; a power transcending all limit and privacy, and by virtue of which a man is the conductor of the whole river of electricity.
Ralph Waldo EmersonRead
Creativity is a natural extension of our enthusiasm.
Earl NightingaleRead
Sometimes ideas are coming so fast that I have to stop doing one song to get another. But I don't forget the first one. If it works, it will always be there. It's like the truth: it will find you and lift you up. And if it ain't right, it will dissolve like sand on the beach.
PrinceRead