Quotes from Jami Attenberg

Perfection itself is boring; it's only everything leading up to it that's interesting.

but she never wanted to be in a relationship ever again. Because relationships were the worst. So many obligations. So many compromises. So many arguments. Someone always got destroyed in the end. Sometimes everyone got destroyed in the end.

What do you do when you already know what your problem is? What if it's not really a problem? It's only a problem if I want a relationship. If I want to fit into a conventional mode of happiness. It's only a problem if I care. And I can't tell if I care.

I am on Team Drunk Lady, obviously.

I stop painting entirely. I get a job in advertising. I get older. I grow up, I suppose. I never look back except in those moments when I can't stop fucking thinking about it.

If someone loves you, go home to them.

His words are so slippery they might slide right off the page.

He was a fool to think he could have love twice in this life. Arrogance. He held her hand close his chest with both of his hands. No one was entitled to anything in this life, not the least of all love.

I think about when I used to dress that way, not in that dress, obviously, but in that flesh. I will never do it again. I have learned all kinds of lessons from dressing that way, great lessons, terrible lessons, boring lessons, all of them, the big one being no matter how much you own yourself and your body and your mind, there are men who will always try to seek power over your body, even if it is just with their eyes, although often it is with their words and sometimes with their hands.

I have a hard enough time being me, not pulling myself apart every single day. And if it wasn't just my personality and my life choices, but then also my art too? I would die." I

Everyone always thinks of ghosts as being invisible or like air but they take up so much space in a room, you've no idea.

But I cry anyway because it was a path I could have taken and didn't. I cry for the lost idea, the lost concept. Sometimes I cry, too, for who I was as an artist and what my life could have been like if only I had kept going. I weep for my lost identities. I weep for my possibilities.

If you can't see the beauty in the dirt then I feel sorry for you. And if you can't see why these streets are special, then just go home already.

These are the things we do sometimes, she thinks. We remind ourselves of why we're in love, so that we can stay that way. It's not a permanent state, remember that, she tells herself.

there's just so many goddamn things we never get to know. We're not entitled to all the truth.

It's not that you want a baby, or want to get married, or any of it. It's not your bag. You just feel tired for some reason. Tired of the world. Tired of trying to fit in where you don't.

He asks me if I'd like to see the apartment and I say 'Anytime,' and he says, 'Sure, why don't you come up now, then?' I can't think of a reason not to. There's nothing waiting for me at home but my refrigerator, my laptop, and death.

Worst parent on the planet. All he knew how to do was bark orders and walk away. He didn't understand that his daughter was smarter than that, that she wasn't a dog.

We listen to NPR for the first two hours on the road, the strange comfort of bad news reported in reasonable tones,

Sometimes blessings are indiscriminate.

I didn't have it in me," I say. "The minute I felt unsupported I gave up. I saw that to be a painter meant a lifetime of not being supported.

He did bad things. Even though he thought he was the hero.

I don't know how to make you happy without making me unhappy.

To be an artist means a lifetime of being told no, with the occasional yes showing up just to give you enough hope to carry on.