Jay McInerney

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.

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

Mine is not an autonomous imagination.

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

It's the cynics who never get married.

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

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

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.

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.

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

There aren't many shy writers left.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

I love to imagine inside the head of a woman.

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

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

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.

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.