Jami Attenberg Quotes
-
I did get in a few fights in school. Kids threw around anti-Semitic slurs, not knowing necessarily what they meant. It was probably just something they picked up somewhere, as kids do.
-
As creative people, we should be really conscious of being of service in our work, being as generous as we can.
-
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.
-
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.
-
In 1998, I started a blog, something I could control very easily and update at my own whim.
-
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.
-
No matter how much money I made from writing, I'd keep the bookstore job.
-
Food and love are all intertwined at our core level. It can be a very nurturing, wonderful, loving thing.
-
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.
-
No matter how many feminist tracts you read, you never forget what boys like.
-
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.
-
Cooking skills aside, my mother is an exceptional nurturer.
-
I didn't go to graduate school, where all the important writers seemed to be getting their start. I didn't pursue getting published in literary magazines. I didn't even send out countless pitch letters and manuscripts to agents.
-
I'm from the Midwest. We like to know who our neighbors are.
-
When does an object become a symbol? All I know is you cannot force it.
-
I think it's nearly impossible to write something fictional without having it be about yourself in some way or another.
-
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.
-
My parents are still married. They don't weigh 350 pounds; they go to the gym all the time.
-
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.
-
I'm not really interested in writing or reading about people who are nice and easy. I like the problem children.
-
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.
-
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.
-
I don't know if I had ever found my place in the world until I fully committed to being a writer.
-
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.