Jay McInerney Quotes

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

— Jay McInerney

“Everything becomes symbol and irony when you've been betrayed”

— Jay McInerney

“Things happen, people change,' is what Amanda said. For her that covered it. You wanted an explanation, and ending that would assign blame and dish up justice. You considered violence and you considered reconciliation . But what you are left with is a premonition of the way your life will fade behind you, like a book you have read too quickly, leaving a dwindling trail of images and emotions, until all you can remember is a name.”

— Jay McInerney

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

— Jay McInerney

“It's like, you can't trust anybody, and if somebody you know doesn't fuck you over it's just because the price of selling you down the river was never high enough.”

— Jay McInerney

“Something changed. Somewhere along the line you stopped accelerating.”

— Jay McInerney

“There is a shabby nobility in failing all by yourself.”

— Jay McInerney

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

— Jay McInerney

“Eventually you ascend the stairs to the street. You think of Plato's pilgrims climbing out of the cave, from the shadow world of appearances toward things as they really are, and you wonder if it is possible to change in this life. Being with a philosopher makes you think.”

— Jay McInerney

Tad's mission in life is to have more fun than anyone else in New York City, and this involves a lot of moving around, since there is always the likelihood that where you aren't is more fun than where you are.

— Jay McInerney

Bottles of wine aren't like paintings. At some point you have to consume them. The object in life is to die with no bottles of wine in your cellar. To drink your last bottle of wine and go to sleep that night and not wake up.

— Jay McInerney

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

— Jay McInerney

“Taste is a matter of taste.”

— Jay McInerney

Suffering is supposed to be the raw stuff of art.

— Jay McInerney

“The candor was infectious. It spread back to the beginning of your life. You tried to tell her, as well as you could, what it was like being you. You described the feeling you'd always had of being misplaced, of always standing to one side of yourself, of watching yourself in the world even as you were being in the world, and wondering if this was how everyone felt. That you always believed that other people had a clearer idea of what they were doing, and didn't worry quite so much about why.”

— Jay McInerney

“The intercom buzzes while you're changing your shirt. You push the Talk button: "Who is it?" "Narcotics squad. We're soliciting donations for children all over the world who have no drugs.”

— 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

Eat, drink and remarry is my motto.

— 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

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

— Jay McInerney

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

— Jay McInerney

“Mine is not an autonomous imagination.”

— Jay McInerney

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

— Jay McInerney

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

— 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

“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

“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

“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

“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

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

— Jay McInerney

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

— Jay McInerney

“I love to imagine inside the head of a woman.”

— 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

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 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

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

You never stopped thinking of yourself as a writer biding his time in the Department of Factual Verification. But between the job and the life there wasn't much time left over for emotion recollected in tranquillity.

— Jay McInerney

“The problem is, for some reason you think you are going to meet the kind of girl who is not the kind of girl who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning.”

— Jay McInerney

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

— Jay McInerney

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

— Jay McInerney

“You keep meaning to cultivate an expertise in spectator sport. More and more you realize that sports trivia is crucial to male camaraderie. You keenly feel your ignorance. You are locked out of the largest fraternity in the country.”

— Jay McInerney

“Your head is pounding with voices of confession and revelation. You followed the rails of white powder across the mirror in pursuit of a point of convergence where everything was cross-referenced according to a master code. For a second, you felt terrific. You were coming to grips. Then the coke ran out; as you hoovered the last line, you saw yourself hideously close-up with a rolled twenty sticking out of your nose. The goal is receding. Whatever it was. You can't get everything straight in one night.”

— Jay McInerney

“Your brain at this moment is composed of brigades of tiny Bolivian soldiers. They are tired and muddy from their long march through the night. There are holes in their boots and they are hungry. They need to be fed. The need the Bolivian Marching Powder.”

— Jay McInerney

“The girl with the shaved head has a scar tattooed on her scalp. It looks like a long, sutured gash. You tell her it is very realistic. She takes this as a compliment and thanks you. You meant as opposed to romantic. "I could use one of those right over my heart," you say.”

— Jay McInerney

“The night has already turned on that imperceptible pivot where two A.M. changes to six A.M. You know this moment has come and gone, but you are not yet willing to concede that you have crossed the line beyond which all is gratuitous damage and the palsy of unraveled nerve endings. Somewhere back there you could have cut your losses, but your rode past that moment on a comet trail of white powder and now you are trying to hang on to the rush.”

— Jay McInerney

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

— Jay McInerney

“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.”

— Jay McInerney

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

— Jay McInerney