Quotes from Jami Attenberg

Not ever was there a time when that man's penis stayed put where it was supposed to be, instead living its life as a free-flying dilettante, a party penis, as if it were some sort of rich-kid celebrity DJ hitting new hot spots, London, Paris, Ibiza, except instead of those cities it would be a paralegal's vagina instead.

This was why men exhausted her so. It was a wonder the world didn't collapse daily from the weight of men's egos, she thought.

And that was the day she invented it, this particular glazed expression of hers. She had created it to please her father, but it had served her well in her life. When she wore it, most men thought she was listening to them, and most women knew that the conversation was over.

But I get it; it's a way to mark time. When your life's too busy, it forces you to check in with yourself. Or when it feels all the same all the time, maybe it can make you feel special.

I would never blame anyone for wishing for something more from this life.

These people all woke up this morning and reminded themselves to be human beings. Not everyone knows how to do that. No vermin, my people. Real human beings.

mostly I have found myself resisting their sadness when I have so much of my own.

Playing with them was boring, and it wasn't even their fault. It was just the notion of playing itself. She had never gotten the hang of it, even when she was a child. You needed to be able to adopt a personality other than your own in order to fully immerse yourself in the world of play, and it was burden enough carrying her own self around.

Middlestein thought texting was the same as Morse code, and the more people texted, the closer American came to being a nation at war.

But why should I care what he's doing if I'm crazy about you?' 'We are allowed to have more than one feeling at once,' said Kenneth. 'We are human beings, not ants.

And she was funny and beautiful and she liked the same books, the same music, and she wanted everything I did, was in the exact same place I was in life, and just like that, add water and mix, instant love.

She is vaguely satisfied; in fact she is on the cusp of complete satisfaction, she teeters there, undecided. To give into complete satisfaction is to allow that it can disappear as quickly as it arrived. Once you feel it, you will want it forever. And you cannot have it forever. Because life is not perfect.

The thing that made you special is gone.

It's not that I don't care about seeing her baby, it's that I don't care about seeing any baby. Also

Although in principle both women believed in love, neither of them believed in romance. It was all a performance for them, what women had to do for men, what men had to do for women—it was a manner of assessing each other's value. Cora had taken an economics class in college and was fairly certain her vagina was a capitalist tool.

My love life since I moved to New York from Chicago has been like a desert. I've had tiny little interactions of love, like finding shallow pools of water to drink from, and then I've moved on, hoping that I've stored enough love and affection and excitement to get me to the next place.

She wanted to read and talk and laugh and watch television and listen to the radio. She wanted to watch the world around her go by, and make up stories in her head about everything she saw...Like a princess in a carriage, surveying her kingdom, preferably one with a magical forest.

It's not that I don't care," said Robin. "It's just that I don't want to know." She knew too much already. This was real life, kicking her in the face, and she wanted nothing to do with it.

Só é problema se eu lhe der importância.

She had refined her brain as much as possible to not give a fuck about what her father thought, and yet, every once in a while, she still saw herself through his eyes, heard his voice in her head, although it was not him, specifically, but a collective male vision, what she imagined men to be. And then she caught herself assessing her physical form, and it was not with love, no joy at its bounty, but rather through a skewed, screwed-up lens.

Robin looked at Daniel and had the meanest thought of her life: "He'll do.

I had absolutely no idea what I was doing or how to do it or what it would mean for me to start over again; I just knew it was time to go.

I wanted to go to Italy because I was sad because my heart was broken, and I thought Italy would make me happy again because everything I would eat there would be delicious.

Mas choro na mesma, porque era um caminho possível e eu não fui por aí. Choro pela ideia, pela opção que se perdeu. Às vezes também choro pela artista que havia em mim e pelo que a minha vida poderia ter sido se eu tivesse continuado. Choro por todas as minhas identidades perdidas. Pelas possibilidades que tive.