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.
Jami Attenberg
There's something to be said for an author who clearly respects a reader.
It's the differences in people that help you realize who you are. Even if we silently pass each other on the street.
I check my phone first thing when I wake up in the morning. I usually take it up with me to bed so it's on the floor next to the bed, although not actually in bed with me, because I really do not want to be the person who sleeps with their phone.
I kind of want to be seen as an American writer, not just a New York writer.
Maybe I wouldn't hit three fast food restaurants in a day, but I could hit one in a day. I try not to do that.
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.
Social media can connect you with other people in so many wonderful ways - but it can also make you really sick of yourself.
In the wintertime I like macaroni and cheese.
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.
I think when you first start out, you're writing books that are about your immediate place.
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 don't know if I had ever found my place in the world until I fully committed to being a writer.
Food and love are all intertwined at our core level. It can be a very nurturing, wonderful, loving thing.
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.'
In 'The Odyssey,' every feast is extremely ritualized; high-status individuals even get a better cut of meat.
When does an object become a symbol? All I know is you cannot force it.
Maybe just as many women writers as male writers could be billed as the next great American writer by their publisher. Maybe book criticism sections could review an equal amount of female and male writers. Maybe Oprah could start putting some books by women authors in her book club, since most of her audience is women.
My grandmother died when my mother was just 11 years old, and consequently, my mother never learned how to cook particularly well.
In the past, I was sometimes put in this women's lit category, and I was never really sure that was the appropriate place for me - although I certainly recognize it can be helpful and correct for other people.
I can act like a boy as much as I want, but when I wake up in the morning, I'm still a woman.
As creative people, we should be really conscious of being of service in our work, being as generous as we can.
Listen: I'm OK cute. I'm no stunner.
My parents are still married. They don't weigh 350 pounds; they go to the gym all the time.
I won't go anywhere near the new Times Square. It's seizure-inducing.
There are generations of people who don't know how to eat properly.
No matter how much money I made from writing, I'd keep the bookstore job.
Anything by Lorrie Moore speaks to a certain kind of person.
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.
I wrote a novel. It's called 'The Middlesteins.' It's fiction. It's not a memoir. I'm not a spokesperson.
The best thing about the Web is the sound of all the individual voices rising.
Some journal writers choose to password-protect their site, which is either an incredibly responsible act or a paranoid one.
Many online journals get the most hits of the day during the lunch hour.
I have watched Occupy Wall Street mostly from the sidelines.
In addition to public housing, South Williamsburg is home to shabby artists' lofts like mine, apartments of Hasidic Jews, and one extremely tall, high-priced condo.
I am not one of those people who string their exes along. Instead, I run and hide: under the covers, behind my computer screen, on opposite coasts of the country.
It should be said upfront that I totally dig people who work in bookstores and libraries. They love books, and I love books, and that is all I really need to know. If they are friendly to me, then we are clearly soul mates.
What a character eats is a detail - like eye color or a favorite song. But food is also our lifeblood.
I find that short stories are almost like palate cleansers or brain cleansers.
I feel a bigger sense of fulfillment when writing a novel, and short stories are more about instant gratification.
I'm from the Midwest. We like to know who our neighbors are.
With apologies to all my past boyfriends, I never loved a man the way I loved my old apartment.
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.
For years I drove cross-country, back and forth a dozen times, sometimes on book tour, sometimes just to get lost and found.
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.
Sadly, e-mail has triggered the decline of the handwritten note; I have seen its near-disappearance in my lifetime.
Why e-mail a full emotional statement when, instead, you can text a totally insignificant and ambiguous half-considered phrase?
An ellipsis is a giant ocean of possibilities.
What I try very hard to do is have an hour or so in the morning when I leave the house and don't have my phone with me. I'll go sit in a cafe and read and handwrite in my notebook and not be facing a screen. My head will be clear. I will be able to hear myself think. Because honestly for the rest of the day it's just screens, screens, screens.
