Top 112 Quotes & Sayings by Jami Attenberg

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

I check my phone first thing when I wake up in the morning. I usually take it up with me to bed so it's on the floor next to the bed, although not actually in bed with me, because I really do not want to be the person who sleeps with their phone.

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.

In the wintertime I like macaroni and cheese.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

I've always been an old soul.

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

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.

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.

I have watched Occupy Wall Street mostly from the sidelines.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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 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?

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

I feel a bigger sense of fulfillment when writing a novel, and short stories are more about instant gratification.

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

Cooking skills aside, my mother is an exceptional nurturer.

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

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.

An ellipsis is a giant ocean of possibilities.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Listen: I'm OK cute. I'm no stunner.