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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I think when you first start out, you're writing books that are about your immediate place.
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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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I've always been an old soul.
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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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When does an object become a symbol? All I know is you cannot force it.
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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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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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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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My parents are still married. They don't weigh 350 pounds; they go to the gym all the time.
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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 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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Cooking skills aside, my mother is an exceptional nurturer.
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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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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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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 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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With apologies to all my past boyfriends, I never loved a man the way I loved my old apartment.
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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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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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The best thing about the Web is the sound of all the individual voices rising.
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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'm from the Midwest. We like to know who our neighbors are.
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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.