Jami Attenberg Quotes
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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.
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In 1998, I started a blog, something I could control very easily and update at my own whim.
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When I was growing up in Chicago, my family and I used to go to a local chain, Hackney's, for burgers and their French fried onion loaf. I probably haven't been to one in 25 years, and yet, I once saw Donald Trump from behind in an office building and the first thing that flashed in my mind was his hair looked like that onion loaf.
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I've always been an old soul.
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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.
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When does an object become a symbol? All I know is you cannot force it.
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I don't know if I had ever found my place in the world until I fully committed to being a writer.
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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.
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With apologies to all my past boyfriends, I never loved a man the way I loved my old apartment.
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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.
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Food and love are all intertwined at our core level. It can be a very nurturing, wonderful, loving thing.
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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.
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Cooking skills aside, my mother is an exceptional nurturer.
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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.
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I think it's nearly impossible to write something fictional without having it be about yourself in some way or another.
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I feel a bigger sense of fulfillment when writing a novel, and short stories are more about instant gratification.
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My parents are still married. They don't weigh 350 pounds; they go to the gym all the time.
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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.
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I was fat because I lived in the Midwest in the 1970s, and everyone was a little fat then and only getting fatter.
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I'm from the Midwest. We like to know who our neighbors are.
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It's the differences in people that help you realize who you are. Even if we silently pass each other on the street.
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I'm not really interested in writing or reading about people who are nice and easy. I like the problem children.
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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.
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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.