Jami Attenberg
Jami Attenberg
agents beauty believe curious estate growing industrial neighbors offense street
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.
jobs believe thinking
Writers have a job to do. Editors do, too. You have to stand ground and cede ground on a case by case basis. When an editor tells me something isn't working and I still believe in it, I tend to think it just isn't working hard enough.
believe writing thinking
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.
children believe holiday
I remember being banned from other houses as a younger child during the winter holiday season; I was the only one who didn't believe in Santa Claus, and I was ruining everyone's Christmas.
agent ambivalent art believes business entitled looking love people work
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?
respects
There's something to be said for an author who clearly respects a reader.
decline
Sadly, e-mail has triggered the decline of the handwritten note; I have seen its near-disappearance in my lifetime.
Cooking skills aside, my mother is an exceptional nurturer.
anywhere near
I won't go anywhere near the new Times Square. It's seizure-inducing.
ate fat parents point themselves
I was fat because my parents were a little fat themselves at that point in their lives, and I ate what they ate.
I was fat because I lived in the Midwest in the 1970s, and everyone was a little fat then and only getting fatter.
color hide
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.
dozen drove forth
For years I drove cross-country, back and forth a dozen times, sometimes on book tour, sometimes just to get lost and found.
men talk women
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.