Quotes from Jami Attenberg

Cooking skills aside, my mother is an exceptional nurturer.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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