Jennifer Weiner Quotes & Sayings

It's just you and the track and the clock. It's the most elemental thing there is-the simplest and the hardest. No everybody is cut out for it. — Jennifer Weiner

I'm not in charge of my life. — Jennifer Weiner

How do you find happiness in a body like yours ... like mine? How do you find courage to follow anything anywhere if you don't feel like you fit in the world? — Jennifer Weiner

Took him to a rink. Andy had watched the other skaters, — Jennifer Weiner

I've always been interested in the economics of reproduction, who gets what they want when it comes to childbearing and how these days, money is a tremendous advantage. — Jennifer Weiner

You have to open yourself up to the universe's possibilities. — Jennifer Weiner

Things happen, and you can't make them unhappen. You don't get do-overs, you can't roll back the clock, and the only thing you can change, and the only thing it does any good to worry about, is how you let them affect you. — Jennifer Weiner

Hefty? I'd railed to Peter, waving the clipping for emphasis. Hefty? For the record 'Hefty' is a trash bag. I'm festively plump. — Jennifer Weiner

So I could write a story about a girl who was a lot like me, her ex-boyfriend, who was a lot like Satan, witha twitchy eyelid and a penis the size of a worn-down nub of an eraser. — Jennifer Weiner

With motherhood and marriage there was no finish line, no hour or day or year when you got to say you were through. Life just went on and on, endless and formless, with no performance evaluation, no raises or feedback or two weeks' vacation. — Jennifer Weiner

But I'll tell you a secret. You know what boys like? A woman who's happy with herself. Who's not making herself miserable with the Jane Fonda videotapes and complaining all the time about whether this part or that one's too big. And you know what else they like? She leaned in close, whispering into her granddaughter's ear. Good food. — Jennifer Weiner

I should have been moved. I wasn't. It was as if I'd been frozen, as if I was now a woman made of ice, and he'd come at me not with a torch or even a candle, but with a toothpick, and was plink plink plinking against the smooth impenetrability of my body. I couldn't feel a thing. — Jennifer Weiner

Face and figure from my dad's mother, Grandma Sadie, who was tall, — Jennifer Weiner

You should be concerned about the state of your soul, not the state of your bank account. — Jennifer Weiner

Maybe love was a myth anyhow, a brew of hormones and fantasy, evolution's way of getting men and women together long enough for them to procreate,back in the day when girls got pregnant at twelve, were pregnant or nursing for the next twenty years, and were dead of the plague by forty. — Jennifer Weiner

People say I'm not good at writing about men. My dad left when I was 16. Give me a break. I'm doing the best I can. — Jennifer Weiner

Something that's bigger than you, and something that's kind and forgiving, I'd heard one of the meeting leaders say. That's all your Higher Power has to be. — Jennifer Weiner

The truth is, what I learned this year is that life is hard ... Good people die for no reason. Little kids get sick. The people that are supposed to love you end up leaving. — Jennifer Weiner

Money is a tremendous advantage in just about everything, but in terms of reproduction, if you're a poor woman and you are infertile, it's like too bad, so sad. And if you are a wealthy woman, you can kind of buy whatever you want. — Jennifer Weiner

Okay, I thought. Here you are. You are here. And you move forward because
that's the way it works; that's the only place u can go. You keep going
until it stops hurting, or until you find new things to hurt you worse, I
guess. And that is the human condition, all of us lurching along in our own private miseries, because that's the way it is. Because, I guess, God didn't give us any choice. You grow up, I remembered Abigail telling me. You learn. — Jennifer Weiner

Born on third base and think they hit a triple, — Jennifer Weiner

And then he left, and came back, and our lives fell apart, like a well-loved book that you'd
read and read again, until one night you picked it up to read yourself to sleep and the binding collapsed, sending dozens of pages spiraling toward the floor. — Jennifer Weiner

Is it still there?" I asked, staring at his head, bent over, as he wedged the stethoscope beneath my left breast. And then, before I could stop myself, "Does it sound broken? — Jennifer Weiner

Hell is an Eagles game where the bleachers are always freezing, the team is always loosing, and my family is insane — Jennifer Weiner

I wished that my job was baking muffins in a muffin shop, where all I'd have to do was crack eggs and measure flour and make change, and nobody could abuse me, and where they'd even expect me to be fat. Every flab roll and cellulite crinkle would serve as testimony to the excellence of my baked goods — Jennifer Weiner

She hated the implied familiarity when customers requested things from her by name ... — Jennifer Weiner

If you write thrillers or mysteries or horror fiction or quote-unquote speculative fiction, men might read you, and the 'Times' might notice you. — Jennifer Weiner

I didn't trust people who forgot to eat. — Jennifer Weiner

Many writers secretly long to be performers. You always get the 'if you weren't a writer' question. I would be a back-up singer, to stand in the back and go like 'do, do, do.' — Jennifer Weiner

She took no pleasure from the very things I loved, from her size, her amplitude, her luscious, zaftig heft. As many times as I told her she was beautiful, I know that she never believed me. As many times as I said it didn't matter, I knew that to her it did. I was just one voice, and the world's voice was louder. I could feel her shame like a palpable thing, walking beside us on the street, crouched down between us in a movie theater, coiled up and waiting for someone to say what to her was the dirtiest word in the world: fat. — Jennifer Weiner

Sometimes - more often than not - he thought that Rachel and her classmates were just playing at being caring and open-minded, at noticing that there was a world wider than them, their college, their peers. They'd experience poverty in two-hour chunks twice a month. like it was a movie they were going to see or a TV show they were watching, something they'd click off or walk out of when it was done, something they sat through just so they could talk about it with everyone else who'd seen it and had something to say. — Jennifer Weiner

This is motherhood for you,' said my own mother. 'Going through life with your heart outside your body. — Jennifer Weiner

It was easy to make good choices when you had a web of people supporting you, not to mention money as a safety net when everyone else in your family did the right thing, went to the right college, held down a job. — Jennifer Weiner

There is no magic weight, no magic size, no magic number on the scale where, as soon as you hit it, confetti rains down and a band starts to play and hidden doors slide open and Daniel Craig walks through them to lift you in his arms (because, thin as you are, he totally can) and carry you into the life of uninterrupted bliss that you just know could be yours, if you only wore a size two dress. — Jennifer Weiner

Writing let me escape ... It let me escape the insistent tug of my family, and its ongoing misery. Sitting in front of the computer, with the screen blank and the cursor blinking, was the best escape I knew. And there was plenty to escape from. — Jennifer Weiner

This is the meanest thing anyone's ever done to me," I said, through my tear-clogged throat. "I want you to know that." But even as the words were leaving my mouth, I knew it wasn't true. In the grand, historical scheme of things, my father leaving us was doubtlessly worse. Which is one of the many things that sucked about my father?? he forever robbed me of the possibility of telling another man, This is the worst thing that's ever happened to me, and meaning it. — Jennifer Weiner

Divorce isn't such a tragedy. A tragedy's staying in an unhappy marriage, teaching your children the wrong things about love. Nobody ever died of divorce. — Jennifer Weiner

I remember things like that ... A lifetimes accredidation of unkindness, all of those little longering hurts that I carried around like stones sewn into my pockets. — Jennifer Weiner

Everyone has sorrow. Everyone has obligations. Everyone keeps going. You lean on the people who love you. You do the best you can, and you keep going. — Jennifer Weiner

Thinking that the world was like an orange, that I could split it open with my thumbnail and find a whole different world, the grown-up world, the secrets beneath the skin. — Jennifer Weiner

I shut my eyes, assaulted by a sudden vision of Bruce and his new girl in his wide, warm bed, his arm wrapped companionably around her, telling my family secrets ... and the new girl would give a wise, professionally compassionate kindergarten-teacher nod, all the while thinking what a freak I must be. — Jennifer Weiner

They say - "they" being the great philosophers, or possibly the cast of Seinfeld - that breaking up is like pushing over a Coke machine. You can't just do it, you have to set the thing in motion, rock it back and forth a few times. — Jennifer Weiner

People will want you to behave a certain way, to make a certain choice because it reinforces the way they see the world ... But you have to do what's right for you. — Jennifer Weiner

When you get everything you wanted, I think maybe you do have to be a little grateful for the people who got you there ... whether or not they thought they were doing you any favors at the time. — Jennifer Weiner

Baby, groaned the guy-Ted? Tad?-something like that-and crushed his lips against the side of her neck, shoving her face against the wall of the toilet stall. — Jennifer Weiner

Addie, please." More tears dripped down her cheeks. "Don't be so hard."
"Oh, please," I muttered ... and that was as far as I got. 'You broke my heart' were the words that had risen to my mouth, but I couldn't say them. That was what you said to a boyfriend, a lover, not your best friend. She'd laugh. And I'd had enough of being laughed at. I'd worked hard to get to a place where it didn't happen anymore, where I didn't move through life like a walking target, where it was just me and my paints and brushes and my big empty bed every night. "You weren't a good friend," I said instead. — Jennifer Weiner

It's as if the fasion designers decided that once a woman hit a certain weight, she'd have no need for business suits, for skirts and blazers, for anything except glorified sweatsuits, and they tried to apologize for dressing us like overaged Teletubbies by silk-screening daisies on the tops. — Jennifer Weiner

I went to Princeton, I minored in women's studies. — Jennifer Weiner

I think it's a very old and deep-seated double standard that holds that when a man writes about family and feelings, it's literature with a capital L, but when a woman considers the same topics, it's romance, or a beach book - in short, it's something unworthy of a serious critic's attention. — Jennifer Weiner

Found, I told myself. Try to get found. — Jennifer Weiner

The girl, Gary's girl ... would keep bowls of Hershey's Kisses on the coffee table, and she'd decorate the house for all the big holidays and most of the small ones. Probably she'd be class mother, and PTA president, and she'd deliver meals to the elderly once a month. In bed, she'd be exuberant, and would take it as an endorsement when Gary sweated all over her. — Jennifer Weiner

F.E.A.R. Stood for face everything and recover — Jennifer Weiner

mom with a part-time (inching — Jennifer Weiner

I wrote my first books when I was single and then I got married and then had a kid and there were different things happening in my life. — Jennifer Weiner

The difference between people who believe they have books inside of them and those who actually write books is sheer cussed persistence - the ability to make yourself work at your craft, every day - the belief, even in the face of obstacles, that you've got something worth saying. — Jennifer Weiner

Back then, I didn't understand that what was happening in my house was not happening in everyone's house at night, when the doors were shut and the blinds were drawn. It took me just as long to sort out my physical self - how to dress in a way that flattered my shape, how to do my hair and makeup (or pay professionals to do it), how to be in a body, in the world. It took time before I could take all that pain and use it; transform all that loneliness and isolation and shame into stories. — Jennifer Weiner

They wouldn't have believed me, and if they had they would have wanted me to explain.
And I had no explanation, no answers. When you're on a battleground, you don't have the
luxury of time to dwell on the various historical factors and sociopolitical influences that caused the war.
You just keep your head down and try to survive it, to shove the pages back in the book, close
the covers and pretend that nothing's broken, nothing's wrong. — Jennifer Weiner

There's something really nice about writing something on Wednesday and watching it being performed live for a studio audience on Tuesday. You never really get that with novels. — Jennifer Weiner

I could have told him that nothing was safe and that no matter how careful you were and how hard you tried, there were still accidents, hidden traps, and snares. You could get killed on an airplane or crossing the street. Your marriage could fall apart when you weren't looking; your husband could lose his job; our baby could get sick or die. — Jennifer Weiner

I've learned a lot this year.. I learned that things don't always turn our the way you planned, or the way you think they should. And I've learned that there are things that go wrong that don't always get fixed or get put back together the way they were before. I've learned that some broken things stay broken, and I've learned that you can get through bad times and keep looking for better ones, as long as you have people who love you. — Jennifer Weiner

Sometimes the worst thing that happens to you, the thing you think you can't survive ... it's the thing that makes you better than you used to be. — Jennifer Weiner

The way I see it," she began, "your mother's devoted her whole life to you kids." She said "you kids"
in precisely the same tone I would have used for "you infestation of cockroaches — Jennifer Weiner

If you write chick lit, and if you're a New Yorker, and if your book becomes the topic of pop-culture fascination, the paper might make dismissive and ignorant mention of your book. If you write romance, forget about it. You'll be lucky if they spell your name right on the bestseller list. — Jennifer Weiner

Husbands and houses are negotiable," she said, "And as for a plan ... we'll figure it out. — Jennifer Weiner

If there had been an exercise I'd liked, would I have gotten this big in the first place? — Jennifer Weiner

husband, Dave, my daughter, and I had moved out of Cen- ter City and into a house in Haverford that I refused to call a McMansion, even though that's exactly what it was, but I loved Ellie's pediatrician so much that 1'd never even tried to find a suburban replacement. — Jennifer Weiner

If a writer writes poems and short stories and novels, but nobody ever reads them, is she really a writer? — Jennifer Weiner

If you wish for something hard enough, the fairy tales teach us, you can get it in the end. But it's hardly ever the way you thought it would be, and the endings aren't always happy ones. — Jennifer Weiner

I'm not cut out to be a famous person; I can't do my hair and makeup well enough. — Jennifer Weiner

If you want to hit someone or you want to throw something, I want you to run first. I want you to run until you can hardly lift your legs and your arms. Run until you're exhausted, and then, if you still want to hit someone or throw something, you just wait 'til you've caught your breath again and then go for it. Try it, — Jennifer Weiner

Head's all empty, I don't care,' he'd sing to me, quoting the Grateful Dead, and I'd force a smile, thinking that my head was never empty and that if it ever was, you could be darn sure I'd care. — Jennifer Weiner

One of its ears stuck straight up, the other flopped as it ran, and I remembered something I'd read somewhere
that when God sees a dog he likes, He folds one of its ears down to remember it. — Jennifer Weiner

How could I live a life where the person who'd built and experienced and created it alongside me, the person who'd seen me in a hundred different moods, at my highest, at my lowest, in the middle of a C-section with my uterus laid out on my belly, was gone? — Jennifer Weiner

I sometimes read about authors who say they require a perfectly silent room maintained at precisely 68 degrees, with trash bags taped over the windows and a white-noise machine in the corner to write, and I think, 'Who are these people, and do any of them have kids?' — Jennifer Weiner

People don't like to see things that aren't perfect. It reminds them of what could go wrong in their own lives, I guess. — Jennifer Weiner

He loved me. He loved me, but he doesn't love me anymore, and it's not the end of the world. — Jennifer Weiner

He'd been lonely, and I'd been lonely, but if we were together, we'd never have to be lonely again. — Jennifer Weiner

The condom broke. I know how stupid that sounds. It's the reproductive version of the dog ate my homework. — Jennifer Weiner

You move forward because thats the way it works; thats the only place you can go. — Jennifer Weiner

My book sales make 'real writers' possible. — Jennifer Weiner

People are always coming up to me with my books and saying, 'You write these things I think but I could never say.' — Jennifer Weiner

conversation with Dave, telling him what had happened. — Jennifer Weiner

The organic produce guy, a young man who'd left Brooklyn in order to minimize his carbon footprint and consume only things he could make or grow himself. This had come to involve ... going toilet-paper free the year before, and making his wife use discarded athletic socks for her monthly cycle.'That poor girl!' said Sylvie, privately resolving to figure out where the young woman was living and anonymously deliver some tampons, the really bad kind, with non biodegradable plastic applicators. — Jennifer Weiner

Once, she'd cried, telling me that she thought she should have noticed, should have seen that I was in trouble, should have done something. I told her it was my problem and my job to solve it. "Just be my friend," I said. "That's what I need most. — Jennifer Weiner

My feeling about my own work is, I could be writing 'The Aeneid' and they would still have to call it chick lit or mommy lit or menopausal old hag lit. — Jennifer Weiner

Toronto Sydney New Delhi — Jennifer Weiner

I don't particularly like being angry about stuff. I'd rather hang out with my daughter and write my little books. — Jennifer Weiner

Read everything. Read fiction and non-fiction, read hot best sellers and the classics you never got around to in college. — Jennifer Weiner

I decided.. that I could go on being scared forever, that I could keep walking, that I could carry my rage around, hot and heavy in my chest forever. But maybe there was another way. You have everything you need, my mother had told me. And maybe all I needed was the courage to admit that what I needed was someone to lean on. — Jennifer Weiner

I knew that it was no fault of ours. We weren't to blame, I thought to myself. I could let it go; I could set the burden down, I could be free.
Except, of course, that knowing something in your head is different than feeling it in your heart. — Jennifer Weiner

I miss him all the time." I shook my head, disgusted at my own mopiness. "It's like being haunted or something. And I don't have the luxury of being haunted right now. I need to think about myself ... — Jennifer Weiner

Admitting you had a problem was the first step - everyone knew that - but admitting you had a problem also left you open to the possibility that maybe you couldn't fix it — Jennifer Weiner

As the days piled up into weeks, and the weeks turned into months, and fall slid into winter, I realized one of the great truths about tragedy: You can dream of disappearing. You can wish for oblivion, for endless sleep or the escape of fiction, of walking into a river with your pockets full of stones, of letting the dark water close over your head. But if you've got kids, the web of the world holds you close and wraps you tight and keeps you from falling no matter how badly you think you want to fall. — Jennifer Weiner

When I married him, but, in the ten years since, it seemed like he'd decided that anything that went wrong in his life or anyone else's was the liberals' fault. Ellie considered — Jennifer Weiner

There was a parallel universe that ran alongside the normal world, and if you went through the wrong door, or turned left instead of right, ran up the street instead of down it, you could accidentally push the curtain aside and end up in that other place, where everything was different and everything was wrong. That — Jennifer Weiner

I also believe that if you're really a writer, you'll write, and that nobody could stop you. — Jennifer Weiner

Have you ever considered that there might be something wrong with your brain?
Oh, I think there might be something wrong with everyone else's. — Jennifer Weiner

Regular women carry pictures of their babies, their husbands, their summer houses. Fat ladies carry pictures of themselves at their skinniest. — Jennifer Weiner

Change the setting, change the mood ... She'd taught him to make himself go outside if he was in, or inside if he was out, to interrupt the plummet with something as simple as making a cup of tea or spending a few minutes working on crossword puzzles. — Jennifer Weiner

Women are far and away the bigger consumers of fiction than men, but men are still far and away the more reviewed, the more critically esteemed, the more respected. That can get frustrating. — Jennifer Weiner