Jay Neugeboren quotes:

I remain curious about all the lives I can't have - and about the lives of others, real and imagined, past and present, and how people came to be who they are... and who they might yet be. I am enchanted by the landscape of possibility.

It was difficult to enjoy the trees and flowers when I was so aware of all that I had not yet done - pruning, weeding, transplanting, mulching, composting, tagging. When I was doing the work myself, I was happy, free.

There is no particular source my stories come from. The stories always seem to be there waiting for me, though sometimes shrouded in mist and fog.

A novel, for me, relies on my imagination to inspire your (the reader's) imagination. It is not all there for you. My novels or my stories come to me visually. I use words to translate the novel I see inside my head into words that I hope will create a movie inside your head.

A movie can evoke feelings, thoughts, it is all there and happening, there is no control over the images when you are watching a movie. You are transported for three hours to a world where you see real people. In a novel it is private - there's only you, and words on pages. The landscape is in your mind and in your feelings.

I hope my novels will allow you to become lost in a world totally unlike the actual world we live in. I work hard to make the words evoke particular images, thoughts, feelings, the mystery of relationships.

As a writer I am proud that if you took my last four books, and they didn't have my name on them, I don't think readers would know they were by the same author.

Writing a novel, I am making is an object that has a life and identity of its own, apart from me.

There is nothing wrong with a writer who has a distinct style in book after book, but I am not interested in repeating myself.