Jenny Offill
Jenny Offill
Jenny Offillis an American novelist...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
CountryUnited States of America
sticks burrs bits
These bits of poetry that stick to her like burrs.
inhabit writer
I think part of what I like about being a fiction writer is that I can inhabit something that's beyond the limits of my own personality.
cross distilled domestic interested life novel slightly streak
I have a slightly contrarian streak as a writer, and one of the things I was interested in was how distilled could I make a life, and how I could cross what is kind of trivialized as a domestic novel with a novel of ideas, a philosophical novel.
catch certain classic kept linear maybe note novel parts point seemed worked written wrote
I had written a novel that was more of a classic linear novel, and I worked on it and worked on it for years, and it always seemed like it wouldn't catch fire. At a certain point I just scrapped it all, and I kept maybe 15 percent of it, and I wrote those parts out on note cards.
felt rushes
I felt like I could write about quiet, self-contained moments and also about those moments when the world rushes in again.
writer
What I try to capture as a writer is the feeling of being alive, of being awake.
art danger hole house life naturally
Always the danger for me in life and in art is not to be brave. I am not a naturally brave person. I have to will myself not to hole up in my house and read my life away.
books call chance collect facts flip library operation outdated quotes reference strike time
Oh, I collect facts and quotes when I can't write, and I can't write most of the time. I do a little chance operation sometimes where I flip through outdated reference books to see if anything will strike me as beautiful or momentous. Library roulette, I call it.
bit center extreme gives lens opposed
I think that when we're looking at things when we're right in the center of things, as opposed to being a bit unmoored from what's going on around us, we see things through a kind of dulling lens of convention, and there's something about extreme emotional experiences that gives us a heightened clarity, I think, of thought and of feeling.
bull candy dawn fall great habits laid matter midnight reasonable stores sure work
I like to write from midnight to dawn with great stores of candy and Red Bull laid in... I'm not sure why I have the work habits of a 20-year-old coder, but no matter how many times I set up a more reasonable schedule, I always fall back to this.
mother father said
When God is a father, he is said to be elsewhere. When God is a mother, she is said to be everywhere.
years self birth
Also she signed away the right to self-destruct years ago. The fine print on the birth certificate, her friends call it.
years kind desks
For years, I kept a Post-it note above my desk. WORK NOT LOVE! was what it said. It seemed a sturdier kind of happiness.
ambition looks coats
Some women make it look so easy, the way they cast ambition off like an expensive coat that no longer fits.