Jay Mcinerney Quotes

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.

- Jay McInerney

We've been hearing about the death of the novel ever since the day after Don Quixote was published.

- Jay McInerney

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.

- Jay McInerney

Yeah, 'Gossip Girl' is a good show. It's a real New York show, like 'Sex and the City.'

- Jay McInerney

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.

- Jay McInerney

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.

- Jay McInerney

I feel that there's a lot of would-be guardians of the culture who think that high-minded literary purpose and the life that gets chronicled in the gossip columns, that these two things are incompatible.

- Jay McInerney

It's the cynics who never get married.

- Jay McInerney

I'm afraid that - not necessarily deliberately, but consistently - I've made a kind of laboratory out of my life, where I mix the stuff in the test tubes to create explosions - possibly resulting in interesting by-products. I mean, not deliberately - I'd be crazy to deliberately do that - or maybe not.

- Jay McInerney

I envy those writers who outline their novels, who know where they're going. But I find writing is a process of discovery.

- Jay McInerney

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

- Jay McInerney

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

- Jay McInerney

My former wife is a very eccentric woman, which is why I still love her.

- Jay McInerney

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.

- Jay McInerney

I don't want to have my life fall apart for my work.

- Jay McInerney

Love is the eternal quest: almost everyone wants to love and be loved.

- Jay McInerney

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

- Jay McInerney

Most novelists I know went through a period of intense self-examination and self-loathing after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. I certainly did.

- Jay McInerney

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.

- Jay McInerney

'Socialist' is the nastiest thing you can say about an American politician in some quarters.

- 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.

- Jay McInerney

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

- Jay McInerney

Eat, drink and remarry is my motto.

- Jay McInerney

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.

- Jay McInerney

The definition of gumbo is almost as slippery as that of Creole. Just as gumbo can contain pretty much any kind of meat or seafood, Creole is a vague and inclusive term for native New Orleanians, who may be black or white, depending on whom you're asking.

- Jay McInerney

When you catch yourself lying to your therapist, you know it's a waste of money.

- Jay McInerney

There is a type of writer that can happily bury themselves in the country and dig very deep, but I'm not like that.

- Jay McInerney

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

- Jay McInerney

I don't think I've left a trail of weeping women in my wake. I mean, the number of serious relationships I've had has not been into double digits.

- Jay McInerney

I think a lot of the people who write about me think that if they had to write fewer interviews then they would transcribe their life-story and it would be a big success. Or should be.

- Jay McInerney

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

- Jay McInerney

Mine is not an autonomous imagination.

- Jay McInerney

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

- Jay McInerney

I always hope people will like me, and I'm always afraid they will think I'm a fraud. I try harder than perhaps I should to make people like me, then it backfires. They think I'm a buffoon.

- Jay McInerney

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

- Jay McInerney

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

- Jay McInerney

There aren't many shy writers left.

- Jay McInerney