Jennifer Weiner Quotes

If you've written a powerful book about a woman and your publisher then puts a 'feminine' image on the cover, it 'types' the book.

The whole idea of a stereotype is to simplify. Instead of going through the problem of all this great diversity - that it's this or maybe that - you have just one large statement; it is this.

The mistake we make with many people is that we assume that we have the model. It is a type of condescension.

It's just sad that one's attitude is always speculated, even if you've not done something.

All of us make assumptions about what somebody's potential is, because we all think of why somebody can or can't do something. We make terrible assumptions.

My dear boy, please don’t put a label on me—don’t make me a category before you get to know me!

People have a preconceived notion about who I am and it's interesting. It's like picking who you want to win for the Oscars and not seeing the movie.

a. Critics: people who make monuments out of books. b. Biographers: people who make books out of monuments. c. Poets: people who raze monuments. d. Publishers: people who sell rubble. e. Readers: people who buy it.

I can say that if you're a writer who happens to be a woman, you'll get a book cover that depicts a woman with no head, or a woman turning away, or a pair of high heels. You have to fight to not get stuck with these covers. In the U.S. women are chick-lit writers unless they prove otherwise, and that's frustrating.

At different times and in different places I have come to expect certain books to look a certain way, and, as in all fashions, these changing features fix a precise quality onto a book's definition. I judge a book by its cover; I judge a book by its shape.

Assume nothing. Inside every dumb blond there may be a very smart brunette.

You can have examples of reasons to hate people, but if you analyze those reasons it's like, Oh, I'm hating that person based on one thing they did, but I don't actually know them well enough to hate them.

If a man’s house is full of medicine bottles, we infer the man is an invalid. But if his house is full of books, we conclude he is intelligent.

A book cannot easily be too bad for the general public, but may easily be too good.

To me, the solidarity of readers is far more important than the solidarity of writers, particularly since readers in fact find ways to connect over a book or books, whatever they may be.

We take it for granted we know the whole story - We judge a book by its cover and read what we want between selected lines.

The stories never said why she was wicked. It was enough to be an old woman, enough to be all alone, enough to look strange because you have no teeth. It was enough to be called a witch. If it came to that, the book never gave you the evidence of anything. It talked about "a handsome prince"... was he really, or was it just because he was a prince that people called handsome? As for "a girl who was as beautiful as the day was long"... well, which day? In midwinter it hardly ever got light! The stories don't want you to think, they just wanted you to believe what you were told.

A reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure until he knows whether the writer of it be a black man or a fair man, of a mild or choleric disposition, married or a bachelor.

In Poland, for a while, my books all had cartoons on the cover. I trust my publishers in each country to know what works in their individual markets.

Readers, not critics, are the people who determine a book's eventual fate.

Someone who has a disability is not necessarily in distress. You may be embarrassing and inconveniencing someone by butting in and making assumptions.

It's somewhat of a contradiction, .. I guess the quieter the voice, the more necessary it is to push it. It's not going to leap out at you and scream. I also can't control how a book is marketed. To say the book marketing is aggressive, fine, I'm happy with that. Push the book. That doesn't mean that my personality or writing style changes.

Foreign visitors . . . how impressed you all are with foreign visitors! But they come in many different varieties.

In this book it is spoken of the Sephiroth and the Paths; of Spirits and Conjurations; of Gods, Spheres, Planes, and many other things which may or may not exist. It is immaterial whether these exist or not. By doing certain things certain results will follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them.

The novelist now usurps the chair of the educator, the pulpit of the preacher, the columns of the journalist. Yet his original purpose of entertaining may have been his highest purpose. (introduction to Gladiator, Book League Monthly, 1930)