A Quote by Jennifer Egan
When I had my first child, I didn't write for a year, and I felt when I tried to start again I might actually not be able to do it anymore. I really could not do it well, and I felt out of sorts with it.
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And I felt like my heart had been so thoroughly and irreparably broken that there could be no real joy again, that at best there might eventually be a little contentment. Everyone wanted me to get help and rejoin life, pick up the pieces and move on, and I tried to, I wanted to, but I just had to lie in the mud with my arms wrapped around myself, eyes closed, grieving, until I didn’t have to anymore.
Get Up is basically the book I wanted to have my first year of sobriety. I wish someone had given me this book a year before I even went to a meeting because I was already miserable. I didn't enjoy drinking anymore, I just couldn't stand the idea of not doing it. I was afraid if I got sober I wouldn't be able to write anymore. That was a really big fear of mine, which turned out not to be true.
I just started trying to figure out how to write [something] which was unlike anything anybody had ever seen, and once I felt like I had figured that out I tried to figure out what kind of book I could write that would be unlike anything anybody had ever seen. When I started writing A Million Little Pieces I felt like it was the right story with the style I had been looking for, and I just kept going.
It's not a born-again thing; it was a peaceful, really, really cool moment where I just felt that I was no longer the dad anymore. I actually had become a son, and it makes things much easier from a day-to-day perspective.
When I was 12 my brother told me I had to wear the burqa, but I really wanted to play, because I was a child. It's an age you want to play outside and have a good time. And they told me I had to wear it or I couldn't leave the home. I felt it was controlling me, because when I wore it I felt I wasn't a child anymore.
When I was pregnant, I felt filled with life, and I felt really happy. I ate well, and I slept well. I felt much more useful than I'd ever felt before.
I'd had my whole life to write my first album. I had my No. 1 and my third single out, and they go, 'Hey, guess what? We need to start recording the next one.' I'm like, 'Uh oh, I got to write another album. Well, how am I gonna write 'Should've Been a Cowboy' and 'Ain't Worth Missing' and all that again?' It took me forever to write the first one.
I felt a certain modicum of success because I had been paid well to be an actor for the first time in my life, but I felt like I had done adolescent work on the show, and stepping into the New York theater arena was the first time I felt like I'd come into my own. I felt like I was proving myself in a gladiatorial arena.
I tried once in my life to write a novel. I had written something like 80 pages of it when my laptop got stolen. When I told people this, they acted as if something tragic had happened, but I kind of felt relieved, grateful to the thief who saved me from another year of something that felt more like homework than fun.
When I had the idea for 'Shopaholic', it was as though a light switched on. I realised I actually wanted to write comedy. No apologies, no trying to be serious, just full-on entertainment. The minute I went with that and threw myself into it, it felt just like writing my first book again - it was really liberating.
It felt very natural to me to write a Christmas song, but at the same time I had to really put all sorts of pressure aside and just let the creativity flow and see what came out.
For the first time in a long time I thought about Maman. I felt as if I understood why at the end of her life she had taken a 'fiancé,' why she had played at beginning again. Even there, in that home where lives were fading out, evening was a kind of wistful respite. So close to death, Maman must have felt free then and ready to live it all again. Nobody, nobody had the right to cry over her. And I felt ready to live it all again too.
...she could express her soul with that voice, whenver I listened to her I felt my life meant more than mere biology...she could really hear, she understood structure and she could analyze exactly what it was about a piece of music that had to be rendered just so...she was a very emotional person, Annette. She brought that out in other people. After she died I don't think I ever really felt anything again.
I do not like eating meat because I have seen lambs and pigs killed. I saw and felt their pain. They felt the approaching death. I could not bear it. I cried like a child. I ran up a hill and could not breathe. I felt that I was choking. I felt the death of the lamb.
I've always felt writing is an art. Publishing is a business. I felt strongly if I was going to write, I would write what I wanted to, and if the 'market' didn't respond, there was nothing I could really do about it.
I'm actually sort of shocked that I was able to get a medal in 2014 and really have any of the success I had before because as soon as I came out, it was like a whole new world for me, and I felt so free, so confident, that it's actually shocking that I was able to compete any other way.
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