Jami Attenberg Quotes & Sayings

There are a lot of great things about food, but it's something that's an eternal struggle in our contemporary society, where and how food is made, where it's coming from, how much to consume. There are so many layers to it. — Jami Attenberg

No matter how many feminist tracts you read, you never forget what boys like. — Jami Attenberg

Worst parent on the planet. All he knew how to do was bark orders and walk away. He didn't understand that his daughter was smarter than that, that she wasn't a dog. — Jami Attenberg

If she had known just a few months before, during more innocent times, that she would feel that way for the rest of her life ... which is to say conflicted, she would have treasured those unaware, nonjudgmental, preadolescent moments more thoroughly. (Oh, to be eleven again!) Because once you know, once you really know how the world works, you can't unknow it. — Jami Attenberg

Her life is architected, elegant and angular, a beauty to behold, and mine is a stew, a juicy, sloppy mess of ingredients and feelings and emotions, too much salt and spice, too much anxiety, always a little dribbling down the front of my shirt. But have you tasted it? Have you tasted it. It's delicious. — Jami Attenberg

Everyone agreed that Edie was a tough woman to love, though she was worth loving. — Jami Attenberg

Your family is unavoidable. You cannot escape them or trade them in for another family. You also can't change them ... but you can change your response to them. — Jami Attenberg

I am on Team Drunk Lady, obviously. — Jami Attenberg

My Twitter feed is probably my biggest resource of news. Other people scour the web so I do not have to, and I thank them for it. — Jami Attenberg

The very best parts of me go into my writing, it is the best version of myself, and I don't think it's hubristic to believe that that's worth something, worth someone else's time. It's the most I have to offer the world. — Jami Attenberg

I don't pretend for a second that I'm that great of a person on a day-to-day basis. I'm a deeply flawed human. — Jami Attenberg

I have a hard enough time being me, not pulling myself apart every single day. And if it wasn't just my personality and my life choices, but then also my art too? I would die." I — Jami Attenberg

An ellipsis is a giant ocean of possibilities. — Jami Attenberg

What a character eats is a detail - like eye color or a favorite song. But food is also our lifeblood. — Jami Attenberg

In 1998, I started a blog, something I could control very easily and update at my own whim. — Jami Attenberg

I won't go anywhere near the new Times Square. It's seizure-inducing. — Jami Attenberg

There's just so many goddamn things we never get to know. We're not entitled to all the truth. — Jami Attenberg

Then she calls me and she's crying and we talk for a while about her marriage and while I am sad that my friend is sad, it makes me happier than ever that I've never been married and never will be, because marriage sounds like a goddamn job, and why would I want another one of those? — Jami Attenberg

For years I drove cross-country, back and forth a dozen times, sometimes on book tour, sometimes just to get lost and found. — Jami Attenberg

And she was funny and beautiful and she liked the same books, the same music, and she wanted everything I did, was in the exact same place I was in life, and just like that, add water and mix, instant love. — Jami Attenberg

Playing with them was boring, and it wasn't even their fault. It was just the notion of playing itself. She had never gotten the hang of it, even when she was a child. You needed to be able to adopt a personality other than your own in order to fully immerse yourself in the world of play, and it was burden enough carrying her own self around. — Jami Attenberg

I don't know if I had ever found my place in the world until I fully committed to being a writer. — Jami Attenberg

If you can't see the beauty in the dirt then I feel sorry for you. And if you can't see why these streets are special, then just go home already. — Jami Attenberg

With apologies to all my past boyfriends, I never loved a man the way I loved my old apartment. — Jami Attenberg

I had always loved life on the road. It was just something that appealed to me very deeply. — Jami Attenberg

But a funny thing happens when you tell a man that you don't want to get married: they don't believe you. They think you're lying to yourself or to them or you're trying to trick them in some way and you end up being made to feel worse for just telling the truth. — Jami Attenberg

I'm pretty pro-food. — Jami Attenberg

I can act like a boy as much as I want, but when I wake up in the morning, I'm still a woman. — Jami Attenberg

It's the differences in people that help you realize who you are. Even if we silently pass each other on the street. — Jami Attenberg

The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry is a breezy, big-hearted treat, especially if you've ever wondered about the inner workings of America's national treasures
neighborhood bookstores. — Jami Attenberg

And worst of all, what if you don't know what you like at all? What if nothing sticks? Then you spend half your life wondering what it is you're supposed to be doing next. What happens after that? — Jami Attenberg

No offense to Bushwick, where all my neighbors greeted me on the street and there is a growing arts community and a curious beauty to its industrial zone, but Bushwick is no Williamsburg, even if the real estate agents would have you believe it is. — Jami Attenberg

People architect new lives all the time. I know this because I never see them again once they find these new lives. They have children or they move to new cities or even just to new neighborhoods or you hate their spouse or their spouse hates you or they start working the night shift or they start training for a marathon or they stop going to bars or they start going to therapy or they realize they don't like you anymore or they die. It happens constantly. It's just me. I haven't built anything new. I'm the one getting left behind. — Jami Attenberg

I was fat because my parents were a little fat themselves at that point in their lives, and I ate what they ate. — Jami Attenberg

Food and love are all intertwined at our core level. It can be a very nurturing, wonderful, loving thing. — Jami Attenberg

These are the things we do sometimes, she thinks. We remind ourselves of why we're in love, so that we can stay that way. It's not a permanent state, remember that, she tells herself. — Jami Attenberg

I didn't go to graduate school, where all the important writers seemed to be getting their start. I didn't pursue getting published in literary magazines. I didn't even send out countless pitch letters and manuscripts to agents. — Jami Attenberg

Robin looked at Daniel and had the meanest thought of her life: "He'll do. — Jami Attenberg

I have watched Occupy Wall Street mostly from the sidelines. — Jami Attenberg

Middlestein thought texting was the same as Morse code, and the more people texted, the closer American came to being a nation at war. — Jami Attenberg

I wish I had the luxury of time to read and write like grad students do. That sounds pretty awesome. When I was writing my first book one of my friends was going to grad school at the same time and I heard a lot of stories about drinking, too. I feel like everyone was having affairs. — Jami Attenberg

You can quit smoking, and never have to have a cigarette again to survive. But with food, it is a daily challenge. — Jami Attenberg

My parents are still married. They don't weigh 350 pounds; they go to the gym all the time. — Jami Attenberg

The best thing about the Web is the sound of all the individual voices rising. — Jami Attenberg

My love life since I moved to New York from Chicago has been like a desert. I've had tiny little interactions of love, like finding shallow pools of water to drink from, and then I've moved on, hoping that I've stored enough love and affection and excitement to get me to the next place. — Jami Attenberg

It's not that I don't care," said Robin. "It's just that I don't want to know."

She knew too much already. This was real life, kicking her in the face, and she wanted nothing to do with it. — Jami Attenberg

In addition to public housing, South Williamsburg is home to shabby artists' lofts like mine, apartments of Hasidic Jews, and one extremely tall, high-priced condo. — Jami Attenberg

Maybe just as many women writers as male writers could be billed as the next great American writer by their publisher. Maybe book criticism sections could review an equal amount of female and male writers. Maybe Oprah could start putting some books by women authors in her book club, since most of her audience is women. — Jami Attenberg

Studying writing to me means reading and also rewriting obsessively. That's the best way to learn. — Jami Attenberg

And wasn't life full of layers and nuances, colored all kinds of shades of gray, and the way you felt about something when you were twenty or thirty or forty was not how you would feel about something when you were fifty or sixty or seventy
if only he could explain to her that regret can come at any time in your life, when you least expect it, and then you are stuck with it forever. — Jami Attenberg

I just think structure can make a book feel so much bigger. It's the architecture. You could use flimsy materials if you wanted to, even, but it could still feel big. — Jami Attenberg

Do you often find yourself uttering the phrase, 'I feel like I should go?' You do not need to go. You are busy that night. You are busy every night, forever. — Jami Attenberg

My love can be easily bought with a steak from Peter Luger's. — Jami Attenberg

I've been told by people who write historical novels that you just sort of write the emotional truth first, the story at the core, and then you go back and research it at the end. — Jami Attenberg

What I try very hard to do is have an hour or so in the morning when I leave the house and don't have my phone with me. I'll go sit in a cafe and read and handwrite in my notebook and not be facing a screen. My head will be clear. I will be able to hear myself think. Because honestly for the rest of the day it's just screens, screens, screens. — Jami Attenberg

He was a fool to think he could have love twice in this life. Arrogance. He held her hand close his chest with both of his hands. No one was entitled to anything in this life, not the least of all love. — Jami Attenberg

Writers have a job to do. Editors do, too. You have to stand ground and cede ground on a case by case basis. When an editor tells me something isn't working and I still believe in it, I tend to think it just isn't working hard enough. — Jami Attenberg

She wanted to read and talk and laugh and watch television and listen to the radio. She wanted to watch the world around her go by, and make up stories in her head about everything she saw...Like a princess in a carriage, surveying her kingdom, preferably one with a magical forest. — Jami Attenberg

Maybe I wouldn't hit three fast food restaurants in a day, but I could hit one in a day. I try not to do that. — Jami Attenberg

The interesting thing about overeating or being obese is there's this physical manifestation of it. — Jami Attenberg

Cooking skills aside, my mother is an exceptional nurturer. — Jami Attenberg

What's the point of having a book club if you don't get to eat brownies and drink wine? — Jami Attenberg

I don't need to jump off cliffs into oceans to die, because every day there is a little death waiting for me. All I have to do is wake up and walk out the front door. — Jami Attenberg

I check my phone first thing when I wake up in the morning. I usually take it up with me to bed so it's on the floor next to the bed, although not actually in bed with me, because I really do not want to be the person who sleeps with their phone. — Jami Attenberg

I kind of want to be seen as an American writer, not just a New York writer. — Jami Attenberg

My hand, I said her name. — Jami Attenberg

Please make me either relatable or terrible. — Jami Attenberg

I've always been an old soul. — Jami Attenberg

In the wintertime I like macaroni and cheese. — Jami Attenberg

In the past, I was sometimes put in this women's lit category, and I was never really sure that was the appropriate place for me - although I certainly recognize it can be helpful and correct for other people. — Jami Attenberg

She opened the McRib box and eyed the dark red, sticky sandwich. Suddenly she felt like an animal; she wanted to drag the sandwich somewhere, not anywhere in this McDonald's, not a booth, not Playland, but to a park, a shrouded corner of the woods underneath shimmering tree branches, green, dark, and serene, and then, when she was certain she was completely alone, she wanted to tear that sandwich apart with her teeth. — Jami Attenberg

Young adult novels don't shy away from the discussion of weight issues, and 'Blubber,' the tale of an overweight, not-so-sympathetic fifth-grader bullied by her peers, is a refreshing take. — Jami Attenberg

I was fat because I lived in the Midwest in the 1970s, and everyone was a little fat then and only getting fatter. — Jami Attenberg

I've just always written, and always considered myself a writer. I wrote my first story when I was five. There was nothing else I wanted to do or be. — Jami Attenberg

My grandmother died when my mother was just 11 years old, and consequently, my mother never learned how to cook particularly well. — Jami Attenberg

I know I have a problem with semi-colon abuse and have written page-long sentences. Nobody needs to be reading page-long sentences, at least not written by me. — Jami Attenberg

People judge you because of your weight and your food issues. It's very visual. — Jami Attenberg

I don't know much about any of the Hasidim because the men won't talk to me because I'm a woman, and the women won't talk to me because, while I am Jewish, I'm not Hasidic. — Jami Attenberg

I don't think there's any topic a writer should feel afraid of tackling just because it has already been discussed. If you feel you have a fresh perspective and an understanding of a certain emotional truth, it's always worth writing. — Jami Attenberg

Sometimes, things are just exercises. — Jami Attenberg

We've all got flesh. I've just got a little more. — Jami Attenberg

But she never wanted to be in a relationship ever again. Because relationships were the worst. So many obligations. So many compromises. So many arguments. Someone always got destroyed in the end. Sometimes everyone got destroyed in the end. — Jami Attenberg

People are branded as either 'fat' or 'skinny' from an early age. You sort of never shake it, even if you end up losing weight. — Jami Attenberg

No matter how much money I made from writing, I'd keep the bookstore job. — Jami Attenberg

For years I'd thought my color was black: deep, dark, thoughtful, mysterious. Black, you can hide behind. But now I know it is red. — Jami Attenberg

There's something to be said for an author who clearly respects a reader. — Jami Attenberg

Many online journals get the most hits of the day during the lunch hour. — Jami Attenberg

I've got a better idea," says my mother. "Tell me about what you did today. Tell me about New York." So I do, I tell the lifelong New Yorker who chucked it for the woods about the streets of the city: how the subway was so crowded this morning I had to let four trains pass in a row and I was a half hour late to work; how I had a meeting in Times Square and I saw an army of painted topless women posing with tourists for money; how I saw two people dressed up as Disney characters get into a fistfight; how I ate a hot dog from a stand after my client meeting bombed and when I finished it I ate another, on one of the chairs scattered in Bryant Park. A string quartet was playing nearby, under a sponsor banner. "The music part was the part that saved me," I say. "All of it would have saved me," says my mother. — Jami Attenberg

When we are young - or even 32 - we often say 'yes' to everything because we're worried that we won't know what we'll like if we don't try it. — Jami Attenberg

I have very distinct memories about growing up as part of what was then a very small Jewish community in Buffalo Grove, IL. — Jami Attenberg

There are generations of people who don't know how to eat properly. — Jami Attenberg

I think when you first start out, you're writing books that are about your immediate place. — Jami Attenberg

Sometimes blessings are indiscriminate. — Jami Attenberg

I find that short stories are almost like palate cleansers or brain cleansers. — Jami Attenberg

When does an object become a symbol? All I know is you cannot force it. — Jami Attenberg

In your 40s, you shed those who bring you down and surround yourself with the most positive people you know. — Jami Attenberg

There ain't nothing wrong with being alone, which is what I am, or what I have been. It's when it turns to loneliness, when you get to feeling blue about it all, that you're in trouble. There's the problem, loneliness. — Jami Attenberg

Does everything in this life begin and end with Judy Blume? Perhaps. — Jami Attenberg

I'd love to be able to write crazy epic plots. I'm working on it. — Jami Attenberg

The fascinating thing about food is that if you have issues with it, you have to face it every single day. — Jami Attenberg