Tama Janowitz Quotes & Sayings

It was strange how most of the time we got along so well, but then there were these periods when it was a good things the knives were in the drawer and not out on display. — Tama Janowitz

With publicity comes humiliation. — Tama Janowitz

Whether I'm critically well received, whether or not I sell books - of course it becomes progressively harder to get them published - nevertheless, it's what I do, every day. — Tama Janowitz

I don't want my novel to be like Madame Bovary, finely crafted with the life edited out of it. I want my novel to be like a friend telling me a story
so we go off on thoughts; that's the way it is. — Tama Janowitz

I was like a social worker for lepers. My clients had a chunk of their body they wanted to give away; for a price I was there to receive it. — Tama Janowitz

I feel like I sort of missed the eighties. At the time, we didn't know we were having fun, which is probably the way it always is. — Tama Janowitz

...and it made me uncomfortable the way this guy was eating a scrawny chicken wing and looking at me. You know, I just wanted to tell him to knock it off and be a person. — Tama Janowitz

Crimes, sins, nightmares, hunks of hair: it was surprising how many of them has something to dispose of. The more I charged, the easier it was for them to breathe freely once more. — Tama Janowitz

Every book I write, the media just keeps punching me in the face. — Tama Janowitz

I don't like him...he makes me feel like he's going to throw me in a coffin and walk around on top of it. — Tama Janowitz

As a writer, I don't think it's my responsibility to make a point. I just write and hope there's someone who'll like it. — Tama Janowitz

At a mixer at the Art and Architecture School, I met Ray Connors. He had small, worried eyes and fine, babyish hair, already receding. His back was hurting him; two years ago he had fallen down an elevator shaft. He was graduating from the Architecture School in January. He went off to get me a glass of wine; by the time he came back, I had practically forgotten his existence. — Tama Janowitz

Brownstein's is a fresh and jaunty voice, with a jazz snap all his own. — Tama Janowitz

I think the sixties must have been quite a lot of fun. — Tama Janowitz

On bad days, I think I'd like to be a plastic surgeon who goes to Third World countries and operates on children in villages with airlifts, and then I think, 'Yeah, right, I'm going to go back to undergraduate school and take all the biology I missed and then go to medical school.' No. No. — Tama Janowitz

I had a hunger for things I knew realistically I didn't actually care for. — Tama Janowitz

I felt my whole life was a facsimile of a life. — Tama Janowitz

Long after the bomb falls and you and your good deeds are gone, cockroaches will still be here, prowling the streets like armored cars. — Tama Janowitz