Jia Tolentino

It’s a gift to let yourself be changed by a person, and for a person to allow you to change them.

You have kids and you’re forced to remember that time actually extends. The world extends, policy extends, stakes extend past your own life.

I love being bad at something and getting better at it.

It used to be dosing people out of my purse at parties. Now it’s leaving the hang at 11 p.m. to get in bed.

I worked as an editor until I joined the New Yorker , and so I’m an extremely tough self-editor. I also love being edited. I love a hard edit. It’s a privilege to be edited hard.

I had help in the form of my friend and former editor Carrie Frye

I needed to physically be totally alone and be in a different place to get going.

Carrie helped me keep to a strict rhythm, but all the essays took shape in very idiosyncratic ways.

At a basic level, I think something is successful if I think I got myself anywhere new at all.

As a writer, the only thing that you can guarantee yourself pleasure and challenge from is inside your own writing process.

I think it’s so good to abandon projects. I never feel sad about not trying to publish that novel.

if there is anyone who’s telling you, “Here’s what you should do,” they are somehow lying to you

I actually did write a novel. I worked on it for five years, and then I shelved it because it was bad.

I act like a hopeful person, but I think that hope is based on having zero expectations.

I wrote while listening to Caribou, Kamasi Washington, Frank Ocean, Mitski. Towards the end, a lot of Talk Talk.

I feel some sort of chemistry with the subject.…The bar for me is when it’s interesting enough that I would talk about it on my own time.

I’m always afraid of false certainty about things

the natural tendency to solidify a narrative that makes you look good