Jami Attenberg Quotations

We've all got flesh. I've just got a little more.

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.

What a character eats is a detail - like eye color or a favorite song. But food is also our lifeblood.

You can quit smoking, and never have to have a cigarette again to survive. But with food, it is a daily challenge.

The fascinating thing about food is that if you have issues with it, you have to face it every single day.

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

I smoked for many years like a total idiot.

My laptop broke and because of the storm I could not get a new one. And so I've been promoting my book via iPhone.

I'm not that much of a researcher. I'm good at channeling characters, and I'm good at structure.

Sometimes, things are just exercises.

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.

Studying writing to me means reading and also rewriting obsessively. That's the best way to learn.

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.

I love doing readings. I could really give a crap about reviews. It's kind of about the readers.

I've just always written, and always considered myself a writer. I wrote my first story when I was five. There was nothing else I wanted to do or be.

The very best parts of me go into my writing, it is the best version of myself, and I don't think it's hubristic to believe that that's worth something, worth someone else's time. It's the most I have to offer the world.

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.

In its current incarnation in my life touring is a lot of airports and hotels and car services and only OK food.

I had always loved life on the road. It was just something that appealed to me very deeply.

Wouldn't that be nice if we could all afford to just freely pursue our dreams?

I wish I could write while I'm on the road but it never works for me. I need to be sitting still.

I love reading books that you can't put down, and they just take you over for a night or a weekend.

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.

What's the point of having a book club if you don't get to eat brownies and drink wine?

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.

And we all get mired in the bullshit, the personality quirks, the personality disorders (ours and everyone else's), the jealousy, the disappointment, the blocks, the financial struggle, our egos, I do it too, I do it too, but if you can't remember it is all about the work and nothing else then I can't help you and you can't help yourself and you will lose. I promise you. You will lose.

People judge you because of your weight and your food issues. It's very visual.

An ellipsis is a giant ocean of possibilities.

In the wintertime I like macaroni and cheese.

What I try very hard to do is have an hour or so in the morning when I leave the house and don't have my phone with me. I'll go sit in a cafe and read and handwrite in my notebook and not be facing a screen. My head will be clear. I will be able to hear myself think. Because honestly for the rest of the day it's just screens, screens, screens.

I've been told by people who write historical novels that you just sort of write the emotional truth first, the story at the core, and then you go back and research it at the end.

I find that short stories are almost like palate cleansers or brain cleansers.

Please make me either relatable or terrible.

In 1998, I started a blog, something I could control very easily and update at my own whim.

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.

Smart, sharp, and hilarious, Slaughterhouse 90210 is the perfect pick-me-up and never-put-me-down book.

We are human beings, not ants.

With apologies to all my past boyfriends, I never loved a man the way I loved my old apartment.

I'd love to be able to write crazy epic plots. I'm working on it.

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.

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.

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.

There are generations of people who don't know how to eat properly.

Many online journals get the most hits of the day during the lunch hour.

My love can be easily bought with a steak from Peter Luger's.

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.

My grandmother died when my mother was just 11 years old, and consequently, my mother never learned how to cook particularly well.

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.

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.

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 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.

I can act like a boy as much as I want, but when I wake up in the morning, I'm still a woman.

I'm a really selfish person. But I would do anything for my friends.

I make up stories about people who are either imaginary or some variation of myself.

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.

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.

For years I drove cross-country, back and forth a dozen times, sometimes on book tour, sometimes just to get lost and found.

I always tell people this when they're looking for an agent - they should love your work. You are entitled to work with someone who believes in you. Why do business with someone who is ambivalent about you and your art?

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.

I think when you first start out, you're writing books that are about your immediate place.

I think it's nearly impossible to write something fictional without having it be about yourself in some way or another.

I wrote a novel. It's called 'The Middlesteins.' It's fiction. It's not a memoir. I'm not a spokesperson.

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.

Some journal writers choose to password-protect their site, which is either an incredibly responsible act or a paranoid one.

My parents are still married. They don't weigh 350 pounds; they go to the gym all the time.

I won't go anywhere near the new Times Square. It's seizure-inducing.

I was fat because my parents were a little fat themselves at that point in their lives, and I ate what they ate.

I was fat because I lived in the Midwest in the 1970s, and everyone was a little fat then and only getting fatter.

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.

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.

When does an object become a symbol? All I know is you cannot force it.

Why e-mail a full emotional statement when, instead, you can text a totally insignificant and ambiguous half-considered phrase?

Cooking skills aside, my mother is an exceptional nurturer.

There's something to be said for an author who clearly respects a reader.

Sadly, e-mail has triggered the decline of the handwritten note; I have seen its near-disappearance in my lifetime.

No matter how many feminist tracts you read, you never forget what boys like.

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.

Anything by Lorrie Moore speaks to a certain kind of person.

As creative people, we should be really conscious of being of service in our work, being as generous as we can.

You write a book, and after 50 pages you think it's about one thing, and then you write another hundred and you realize it's about something else, and then by the time you're done, you can look back and say, 'Oh, this is what it's about.'

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.

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.

Food and love are all intertwined at our core level. It can be a very nurturing, wonderful, loving thing.

It's the differences in people that help you realize who you are. Even if we silently pass each other on the street.

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.

Does everything in this life begin and end with Judy Blume? Perhaps.

The best thing about the Web is the sound of all the individual voices rising.

No matter how much money I made from writing, I'd keep the bookstore job.

Social media can connect you with other people in so many wonderful ways - but it can also make you really sick of yourself.

The interesting thing about overeating or being obese is there's this physical manifestation of it.

I'm not really interested in writing or reading about people who are nice and easy. I like the problem children.

I kind of want to be seen as an American writer, not just a New York writer.

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.

I have very distinct memories about growing up as part of what was then a very small Jewish community in Buffalo Grove, IL.

I'm from the Midwest. We like to know who our neighbors are.

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.

In your 40s, you shed those who bring you down and surround yourself with the most positive people you know.

In the past, I was sometimes put in this women's lit category, and I was never really sure that was the appropriate place for me - although I certainly recognize it can be helpful and correct for other people.

In 'The Odyssey,' every feast is extremely ritualized; high-status individuals even get a better cut of meat.

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.