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
It's not that I sit down and write great stuff without thinking, not at all. Most of it is terrible. But the stuff that feels fun and fresh to me tends to happen fairly unthinkingly.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Creative work often involves trial and error, and the best ideas can emerge spontaneously.
In this quote, Jennifer Egan emphasizes the unpredictable nature of creativity, acknowledging that while much of her writing may not meet her standards, the moments of inspiration that feel enjoyable and original often arise without overthinking. This highlights the importance of embracing the imperfect process of creation and the serendipitous nature of artistic expression.
Themes
CreativityWritingInspirationArtProcess
In practice
Example use cases
During a workshop on creative writing, I could use this quote to illustrate the importance of allowing yourself to write freely.
More from Jennifer Egan
All quotes →I 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
No art ever survived censorship; no art ever will.
Oscar WildeRead
To the question, ‘Is the cinema an art?’ my answer is, ‘what does it matter?’... You can make films or you can cultivate a garden. Both have as much claim to being called an art as a poem by Verlaine or a painting by Delacroix… Art is ‘making.’ The art of poetry is the art of making poetry. The art of love is the art of making love... My father never talked to me about art. He could not bear the word.
Jean RenoirRead
Accentuated plainness and accentuated vice ought to bring about harmony. Beauty lies in harmony, in style, whether it be the harmony of ugliness or beauty, vice or virtue.
Yevgeny ZamyatinRead
The pointes for girls, I always say, have to be like an elephant's trunk; strong and yet flexible and soft.
George BalanchineRead
There really is no such thing as art. There are only artists.
Ernst GombrichRead
So many old and lovely things are stored in the world's attic because we don't want them around us and we don't dare throw them out.
John SteinbeckRead