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
I guess my comfort zone as a writer is diametrically opposed to my comfort zone as a human being.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the contrast between a writer's creative freedom and personal comfort.
Jennifer Egan emphasizes the dichotomy between her role as a writer, where she ventures into new and challenging ideas and expressions, and her personal life, where she might prefer stability and familiarity. This tension reflects the common struggle many creatives feel, balancing their imagination and desires with everyday existence.
Themes
Comfort ZoneWritingCreativityHuman Behavior
In practice
Example use cases
In a writing workshop, to encourage participants to explore new styles, you might say, 'Remember, as Jennifer Egan suggests, our comfort zones as writers are often different from who we are as individuals.'
More from Jennifer Egan
All quotes βI 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
Doubt not, O poet, but persist. Say 'It is in me, and shall out.' Stand there, balked and dumb, stuttering and stammering, hissed and hooted, stand and strive, until at last rage draw out of thee that dream-power which every night shows thee is thine own; a power transcending all limit and privacy, and by virtue of which a man is the conductor of the whole river of electricity.
Ralph Waldo EmersonRead
You need courage to be creative. You need the courage to see things differently, courage to go against the crowd, courage to take a different approach, courage to stand alone, if you have to, courage to choose activity over inactivity.
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Ad agencies do all kinds of market research that ask people what they think they want, and instead, you should be creating things that you want. If you do something and you get it, the rest of the world will get it, too. Trust your own instincts, your own intellect, and your own sense of humor.
George LoisRead
Creativity has two possibilities. One is that it arises out of your silence, love, understanding, your clarity of vision, your intimate friendliness with existence - then creativity is healthy. But if it does not arise out of meditation, out of silence and peace and understanding and love, then there is a danger. It may be arising out of your confused mind. It may be arising out of your insanity.
RajneeshRead
Every time you work on a project, it's a little vacation from the project you're working on the other 23 hours. That's the thing - it replenishes you to do something else.
Joss WhedonRead
Highly creative people have a gift for connecting supposedly unrelated elements and ideas. They cross borders without regard for customs posts or No Trespassing signs. They throw suspension bridges across great distances. These elegant and unexpected combinations flow together beautifully in the twilight zone, where metaphor and resemblance rules in place of logic and classification.
Robert MossRead