Jenny Offill
Jenny Offill
Jenny Offillis an American novelist...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
CountryUnited States of America
bit center extreme gives lens opposed
I think that when we're looking at things when we're right in the center of things, as opposed to being a bit unmoored from what's going on around us, we see things through a kind of dulling lens of convention, and there's something about extreme emotional experiences that gives us a heightened clarity, I think, of thought and of feeling.
books call chance collect facts flip library operation outdated quotes reference strike time
Oh, I collect facts and quotes when I can't write, and I can't write most of the time. I do a little chance operation sometimes where I flip through outdated reference books to see if anything will strike me as beautiful or momentous. Library roulette, I call it.
catch certain classic kept linear maybe note novel parts point seemed worked written wrote
I had written a novel that was more of a classic linear novel, and I worked on it and worked on it for years, and it always seemed like it wouldn't catch fire. At a certain point I just scrapped it all, and I kept maybe 15 percent of it, and I wrote those parts out on note cards.
inhabit writer
I think part of what I like about being a fiction writer is that I can inhabit something that's beyond the limits of my own personality.
life perhaps scream timid
I can be bolder on the page, as a character. I can gnash my teeth, I can scream and yell, in a way that I'm perhaps too timid to do in real life.
fun getting-older seems
But now it seems possible that the truth about getting older is that there are fewer and fewer things to make fun of until finally there is nothing you are sure you will never be.
mastery done odd-things
One of the odd things about being a writer is that you never reach a point of certainty, a point of mastery where you can say, Right. Now I understand how this is done.
two people
I had thought loving two people so much would straighten it.
cities forever
To live in a city is to be forever flinching,
home people reason
The reason to have a home is to keep certain people in and everyone else out.
daughter morning sleep
A few nights later, I secretly hope that I might be a genius. Why else can no amount of sleeping pills fell my brain? But in the morning my daughter asks me what a cloud is and I cannot say.
buddhist moving suffering
The Buddhists say there are 121 states of consciousness. Of these, only three involve misery or suffering. Most of us spend our time moving back and forth between these three.
fun love-is like-love
The only love that feels like love is the doomed kind. (Fun fact.)
tired imagine courtesy
A thought experiment courtesy of the Stoics. If you are tired of everything you possess, imagine that you have lost all these things.