Jenny Offill
Jenny Offill
Jenny Offillis an American novelist...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
CountryUnited States of America
books call chance collect facts flip library operation outdated quotes reference strike time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 I do a little chance operation sometimes where I flip through outdated reference books to see if anything will strike me as beautiful or momentous.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.
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,
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.
years kind desks
For years, I kept a Post-it note above my desk. WORK NOT LOVE! was what it said. It seemed a sturdier kind of happiness.
years self birth
Also she signed away the right to self-destruct years ago. The fine print on the birth certificate, her friends call it.
writer
What I try to capture as a writer is the feeling of being alive, of being awake.