Explore Quotes by Jay Mcinerney

I don't think I found my voice until I reached New York. I suppose it's possible I would have had some kind of different literary career if I had not discovered New York.

Add anchovies to almost anything, in moderation, and it will taste better.

A creative writing program is only as good as its teachers, and I was fortunate in having two great writers as mentors.

I've been interested in writing and storytelling since I learned to read, but it wasn't until I read Dylan Thomas, when I was 14, that I became interested in language itself, and saw it as more than a transparent medium for a story.

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 certainly think that the publishing houses have to learn more about this informal network of literary blogging and get over the idea that sending an author on a book tour - to Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles - is a successful model anymore.

It's the cynics who never get married.

There aren't many shy writers left.

Sometimes I think everything I touch turns into a Page Six item.

You know, I'm always surprised when I read profiles, and they make me sound so jaded. I am so not jaded.

There's a socialist bias to the consensus of the literary world: a '30s mentality that says factory workers are more worthy of our attention.

If being a spokesman for a generation is a fleeting occupation, being a symbol of an era is downright dangerous for anyone who has the bad luck to outlive it.

I like the fact that I'm living in the world rather than in a university.

I love to imagine inside the head of a woman.

The most interesting things that happen in my books are usually the things that arise spontaneously, the things that surprise me.

Most of the people I write about have been ambitious outlanders who have been attracted to New York from other parts of the world.

You know, Greenwich Village was the traditional bohemia of New York. I wish I could say that was entirely true now. It's, uh... changed. It's now got, God help us, investment bankers and journalists, but it's still a very beautiful part of New York.

Publishers send me a lot of first novels because my first novel was the defining novel of my career, and I guess a lot of people want my benediction or something.

I'm a romantic; you have to be to marry four times.

Mine is not an autonomous imagination.

Anybody who becomes a movie star becomes successful at projecting a certain image to the public.