Jay McInerney Quotes

You are the kind of guy who always hopes for a miracle at the last minute.

Your heartbreak is just another version of the same old story.

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

Something changed. Somewhere along the line you stopped accelerating.

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.

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

Taste ... is a matter of taste (Tad Allagash)

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

Sometimes I think the difference between what we want and what we're afraid of is about the width of an eyelash.

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

Eat, drink and remarry is my motto.

Memories lurk like dustballs in the backs of drawers. The stereo is a special model that plays only music fraught with poignant associations.

Tears come to your eyes, and you feel such a rush of tenderness and pity that you stop beside a lamppost and hang on for support.

He insisted on a single trade secret: that you had to survive, find some quiet, and work hard every day.

There aren't many shy writers left.

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

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

The only sensible approach is not to take it too seriously. What counts is the writing.

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

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

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

It's the Abstract Expressionist approach to publishing. Throw ink at paper. Hope for pattern to emerge.

Under the spell of alcohol your differences recede.

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.

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.

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

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

Suffering is supposed to be the raw stuff of art.

I think men talk to women so they can sleep with them and women sleep with men so they can talk to them.

If it's red, French, costs too much, and tastes like the water that's left in the vase after the flowers have died and rotted, it's probably Burgundy.

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

Everything becomes symbol and irony when you've been betrayed

Sometimes you feel like the only man in the city without group affiliation.

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

Delia's arms were inscribed with a grid of self- inflicted wounds, an intricate text of self-loathing

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

Great minds sink alike, right?

Taste is a matter of taste.

The level of the room keeps changing. All of the surfaces swell and recede with oceanic rhytm. You are not quite all right. You are somewhat wrong.

Love is recreational, it needs not be aspirational

I'd like to have the kind of house someday where a carousel horse wouldn't be out of place in the living room.

It's the cynics who never get married.

Your presence here is is only a matter of conducting an experiment in limits, reminding yourself of what you aren't.

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

Mine is not an autonomous imagination.

You have a bad memory for details. You can tell her the date of the Spanish Armada, but you couldn't even guess at the balance of your checkbook.

The capacity for friendship is God's way of apologizing for our families.

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

There is a shabby nobility in failing all by yourself.

Here you are again. All messed up and no place to go.

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

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.

When the train begins to move they return to their Posts and their private sorrows.

You are a republic of voices tonight. Unfortunately, that republic is Italy.