Jay McInerney
Jay McInerney
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. He edited The Penguin Book of New American Voices, wrote the screenplay for the 1988 film adaptation of Bright Lights, Big City, and co-wrote the screenplay for the television film Gia, which starred Angelina Jolie. He was the wine columnist for House & Garden magazine, and his essays on wine have been...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth13 January 1955
CityHartford, CT
CountryUnited States of America
There is a shabby nobility in failing all by yourself.
Your presence here is is only a matter of conducting an experiment in limits, reminding yourself of what you aren’t.
You keep thinking that with practice you will eventually get the knack of enjoying superficial encounters, that you will stop looking for the universal solvent, stop grieving. You will learn to compound happiness out of small increments of mindless pleasure.
He insisted on a single trade secret: that you had to survive, find some quiet, and work hard every day.
Delia's arms were inscribed with a grid of self- inflicted wounds, an intricate text of self-loathing
Something changed. Somewhere along the line you stopped accelerating.
Great minds sink alike, right?
'Socialist' is the nastiest thing you can say about an American politician in some quarters.
I love to imagine inside the head of a woman.
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.
I'm a romantic; you have to be to marry four times.
There is a type of writer that can happily bury themselves in the country and dig very deep, but I'm not like that.
You described the feeling you’d always had of being misplaced, of always standing to one side of yourself, of watching yourself in the world even as you were being in the world, and wondering if this was how everyone felt. That you always believed that other people had a clearer idea of what they were doing, and didn’t worry quite so much about why.
Mine is not an autonomous imagination.