Top 70 Jami Attenberg Quotes (2025 Update)

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

— Jami Attenberg

2. “There ain’t nothing wrong with being alone, which is what I am, or what I have been. It’s when it turns to loneliness, when you get to feeling blue about it all, that you’re in trouble. There’s the problem, loneliness.”

— Jami Attenberg

3. “An ellipsis is a giant ocean of possibilities.”

— Jami Attenberg

4. “People judge you because of your weight and your food issues. It’s very visual.”

— Jami Attenberg

5. “Wouldn’t that be nice if we could all afford to just freely pursue our dreams?”

— Jami Attenberg

6. “What’s the point of having a book club if you don’t get to eat brownies and drink wine?”

— Jami Attenberg

7. “Studying writing to me means reading and also rewriting obsessively. That’s the best way to learn.”

— Jami Attenberg

8. “I’m not that much of a researcher. I’m good at channeling characters, and I’m good at structure.”

— Jami Attenberg

9. “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.”

— Jami Attenberg

10. “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.”

— Jami Attenberg

11. “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.”

— Jami Attenberg

12. “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.”

— Jami Attenberg

13. “Her life is architected, elegant and angular, a beauty to behold, and mine is a stew, a juicy, sloppy mess of ingredients and feelings and emotions, too much salt and spice, too much anxiety, always a little dribbling down the front of my shirt. But have you tasted it? Have you tasted it. It’s delicious.”

— Jami Attenberg

14. “We are human beings, not ants.”

— Jami Attenberg

15. “Please make me either relatable or terrible.”

— Jami Attenberg

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

— Jami Attenberg

17. “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.”

— Jami Attenberg

18. “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.”

— Jami Attenberg

19. “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.”

— Jami Attenberg

20. “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.”

— Jami Attenberg

21. “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.”

— Jami Attenberg

22. “I don’t need to jump off cliffs into oceans to die, because every day there is a little death waiting for me. All I have to do is wake up and walk out the front door.”

— Jami Attenberg

23. “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.”

— Jami Attenberg

24. “But a funny thing happens when you tell a man that you don’t want to get married: they don’t believe you. They think you’re lying to yourself or to them or you’re trying to trick them in some way and you end up being made to feel worse for just telling the truth.”

— Jami Attenberg

25. “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.”

— Jami Attenberg

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

— Jami Attenberg

27. “I let the sun hit me. The sun’s some kind of gift. Another day we’re all alive. I wish she could understand. I’m just happy to be alive.”

— Jami Attenberg

28. “In the wintertime I like macaroni and cheese.”

— Jami Attenberg

29. “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.”

— Jami Attenberg

30. “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.”

— Jami Attenberg

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

— Jami Attenberg

32. “What if I start making art again? What if I just did that? That is the thing I love, that is the thing I miss the most. For so long I have believed I could never catch up, but now I realize there’s nothing to catch up to, there’s only what I choose to make. There’s still time, I think. I have so much time left.”

— Jami Attenberg

33. “We all lose sometimes. Life’s plenty easy when you’re winning. It’s what you do when you’re down. That’s the real test.”

— Jami Attenberg

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

— Jami Attenberg

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

— Jami Attenberg

36. “The thing that made you special is gone.”

— Jami Attenberg

37. “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.”

— Jami Attenberg

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

— Jami Attenberg

39. “I love doing readings. I could really give a crap about reviews. It’s kind of about the readers.”

— Jami Attenberg

40. “Perfection itself is boring; it’s only everything leading up to it that’s interesting.”

— Jami Attenberg

41. “It’s not that I don’t care about seeing her baby, it’s that I don’t care about seeing any baby. Also.”

— Jami Attenberg

42. “By late August, most New Orleanians have grown accustomed to the summer heat. They are not fond of it, but they know it. It has been hot since April. Was there ever a time when it was not this hot in New Orleans? They can no longer recall. Their will has been broken. Wake up, it’s hot. All day, hot. Nighttime, it feels cooler, but it’s a lie; it’s still hot. And wet. Everyone’s skin glows. People feel sexy and miserable at the same time. Hide inside. Hydrate. Shield yourself. Too hot.”

— Jami Attenberg

43. “I smoked for many years like a total idiot.”

— Jami Attenberg

44. “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.”

— Jami Attenberg

45. “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.”

— Jami Attenberg

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

— Jami Attenberg

47. “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.”

— Jami Attenberg

48. “And worst of all, what if you don’t know what you like at all? What if nothing sticks? Then you spend half your life wondering what it is you’re supposed to be doing next. What happens after that?”

— Jami Attenberg

49. “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.”

— Jami Attenberg

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

— Jami Attenberg