Top 100 Jami Attenberg Quotes
#1. 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
#2. With apologies to all my past boyfriends, I never loved a man the way I loved my old apartment.
Jami Attenberg
#3. 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
#4. There's something to be said for an author who clearly respects a reader.
Jami Attenberg
#5. My parents are still married. They don't weigh 350 pounds; they go to the gym all the time.
Jami Attenberg
#6. My last book was speculative. I just don't quite know what I am doing. But I'll get there. I have a list of things I would love to write.
Jami Attenberg
#7. In 'The Odyssey,' every feast is extremely ritualized; high-status individuals even get a better cut of meat.
Jami Attenberg
#8. 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
#9. 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
#10. 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
#11. People judge you because of your weight and your food issues. It's very visual.
Jami Attenberg
#12. I'd love to be able to write crazy epic plots. I'm working on it.
Jami Attenberg
#13. I love reading books that you can't put down, and they just take you over for a night or a weekend.
Jami Attenberg
#14. 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
#16. The fascinating thing about food is that if you have issues with it, you have to face it every single day.
Jami Attenberg
#17. Everyone always thinks of ghosts as being invisible or like air but they take up so much space in a room, you've no idea.
Jami Attenberg
#18. I feel a bigger sense of fulfillment when writing a novel, and short stories are more about instant gratification.
Jami Attenberg
#19. 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
#20. 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
#21. He texts me on Wednesday and asks if I want to have dinner with him on Friday night. I say I have plans because I'm trying to play hard to get, which has absolutely never worked for me in my entire life. He
Jami Attenberg
#22. We all lose sometimes. Life's plenty easy when you're winning. It's what you do when you're down. That's the real test.
Jami Attenberg
#23. 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
#24. I had always loved life on the road. It was just something that appealed to me very deeply.
Jami Attenberg
#25. Studying writing to me means reading and also rewriting obsessively. That's the best way to learn.
Jami Attenberg
#26. Smart, sharp, and hilarious, Slaughterhouse 90210 is the perfect pick-me-up and never-put-me-down book.
Jami Attenberg
#27. 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
#28. 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
#29. To be an artist means a lifetime of being told no, with the occasional yes showing up just to give you enough hope to carry on.
Jami Attenberg
#30. 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
#31. 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
#32. Sadly, e-mail has triggered the decline of the handwritten note; I have seen its near-disappearance in my lifetime.
Jami Attenberg
#35. 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
#36. I'm not really interested in writing or reading about people who are nice and easy. I like the problem children.
Jami Attenberg
#37. I'm not that much of a researcher. I'm good at channeling characters, and I'm good at structure.
Jami Attenberg
#38. 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
#39. 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
#40. Most of my writer friends are women, and they're all extremely talented, so of course I think the state of contemporary fiction for women is pretty great. Which is to say there is a ton of amazing work out there. These women are writing hard. There's much to be said. We're on it, chief.
Jami Attenberg
#41. There are generations of people who don't know how to eat properly.
Jami Attenberg
#42. 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
#43. The best thing about the Web is the sound of all the individual voices rising.
Jami Attenberg
#44. 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
#45. 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
#46. What a character eats is a detail - like eye color or a favorite song. But food is also our lifeblood.
Jami Attenberg
#47. It's good to try stuff. I wrote a book that I threw away, and I think I just wrote it so I could try stuff in it and not be scared
Jami Attenberg
#48. Wouldn't that be nice if we could all afford to just freely pursue our dreams?
Jami Attenberg
#49. 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
#50. I let the sun hit me. The sun's some kind of gift. Another day we're all alive. I wish she could understand. I'm just happy to be alive.
Jami Attenberg
#51. What's the point of having a book club if you don't get to eat brownies and drink wine?
Jami Attenberg
#53. Devotion to something doesn't make you an expert on life; Life makes you an expert on life.
Jami Attenberg
#54. Social media can connect you with other people in so many wonderful ways - but it can also make you really sick of yourself.
Jami Attenberg
#55. 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
#56. 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
#57. 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
#58. 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
#59. Why e-mail a full emotional statement when, instead, you can text a totally insignificant and ambiguous half-considered phrase?
Jami Attenberg
#60. Cooking skills aside, my mother is an exceptional nurturer.
Jami Attenberg
#62. Some journal writers choose to password-protect their site, which is either an incredibly responsible act or a paranoid one.
Jami Attenberg
#64. 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
#65. Does everything in this life begin and end with Judy Blume? Perhaps.
Jami Attenberg
#66. It should be said upfront that I totally dig people who work in bookstores and libraries. They love books, and I love books, and that is all I really need to know. If they are friendly to me, then we are clearly soul mates.
Jami Attenberg
#67. I have watched Occupy Wall Street mostly from the sidelines.
Jami Attenberg
#68. As creative people, we should be really conscious of being of service in our work, being as generous as we can.
Jami Attenberg
#70. In 1998, I started a blog, something I could control very easily and update at my own whim.
Jami Attenberg
#71. Everyone agreed that Edie was a tough woman to love, though she was worth loving.
Jami Attenberg
#72. 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
#73. 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
#74. I make up stories about people who are either imaginary or some variation of myself.
Jami Attenberg
#75. 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
#77. I think it's nearly impossible to write something fictional without having it be about yourself in some way or another.
Jami Attenberg
#78. I didn't have it in me," I say. "The minute I felt unsupported I gave up. I saw that to be a painter meant a lifetime of not being supported.
Jami Attenberg
#79. I know the bestseller 'Gone Girl' doesn't need an ounce of support from me, but that book was as sharp and witty as they come.
Jami Attenberg
#80. My grandmother died when my mother was just 11 years old, and consequently, my mother never learned how to cook particularly well.
Jami Attenberg
#81. 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
#82. I remember being banned from other houses as a younger child during the winter holiday season; I was the only one who didn't believe in Santa Claus, and I was ruining everyone's Christmas.
Jami Attenberg
#83. I stop painting entirely. I get a job in advertising. I get older. I grow up, I suppose. I never look back except in those moments when I can't stop fucking thinking about it.
Jami Attenberg
#84. 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
#85. In its current incarnation in my life touring is a lot of airports and hotels and car services and only OK food.
Jami Attenberg
#86. 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
#88. I am not one of those people who string their exes along. Instead, I run and hide: under the covers, behind my computer screen, on opposite coasts of the country.
Jami Attenberg
#89. 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
#90. I won't go anywhere near the new Times Square. It's seizure-inducing.
Jami Attenberg
#91. 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
#92. Many online journals get the most hits of the day during the lunch hour.
Jami Attenberg
#93. No matter how much money I made from writing, I'd keep the bookstore job.
Jami Attenberg
#94. I actually didn't grow up in a household that loved Chinese food particularly, and it's not really my go-to food or anything ... We were more a pizza family, being from the Chicago area and all.
Jami Attenberg
#95. 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
#96. I do not mourn the death of the printed letter in a snobby, East Coast, patrician way - 'Where have our manners gone?' - but because I love objects, I love paper, and I love something that I can hold to my chest for a moment. Still, I bear no grudge against the e-mail form itself.
Jami Attenberg
#97. These people all woke up this morning and reminded themselves to be human beings. Not everyone knows how to do that. No vermin, my people. Real human beings.
Jami Attenberg
#100. When does an object become a symbol? All I know is you cannot force it.
Jami Attenberg
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