Jami Attenberg Quotes

The Odyssey is the story of Americans up to the point where they are well-established, and even so it is detached from the historical side.

It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.

No matter how irrelevant social class now is, even the most eager egalitarian must be quietly proud that the posh English rose is still an industry standard for peerlessly sophisticated beauty.

Radical Chic, after all, is only radical in Style; in its heart it is part of Society and its traditions.

It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.

in Virginia and the Carolinas they have a vast multitude of slaves. Where this is the case in any part of the world, those who are free, are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom. Freedom is to them not only an enjoyment, but a kind of rank and privilege.

One notable feature is that English doesn't have much of a system for expressing relative social status.

We didn't do cotillions or anything. My family made fun of the pageants.

'Troy' is an adaptation of the Trojan War myth in its entirety, not 'The Iliad' alone. 'The Iliad' begins with the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon over the slave girl Briseis nine years into the war. The equivalent scene occurs halfway through my script.

Growing up in Chicago, I was a theater nerd. That might be very cool on the East Coast, but in Chicago, it's really the athletes that come in No. 1 on the cool scale. Maybe musicians after that. Community theater? That's way down the list, my friend.

Being born a girl in India, it matters a lot what family you are born into.

There is a close meshing with the ritual properties of persons and with the egocentric forms of territoriality.

As a reader with next to no knowledge of classical mythology, I approached 'The Aeneid' just as I would a contemporary poem or novel - and, despite my ignorance, I was rewarded with a rich and affecting portrait of, among other things, the memorably doomed love affair between Aeneas and Dido.

Sunbae-hoobae seniority is a very tricky, weird kind of thing.

Age was respected among his people, but achievement was revered. As the elders said, if a child washed his hands he could eat with kings.

Hollywood is a strange place. The class structure here is more rigid than almost anyplace I've ever experienced. It's made more difficult by the fact that it's constantly changing. You never know what class you belong to unless you're one of the two or three people that have been in the same echelon for a long, long time.

If we were second class citizens we'd be driving old Cadillacs and living good. If we were first class we'd be driving a Rolls Royce.

You, who are ashamed of your poverty, and blush for your calling, are a snob; as are you who boast of your wealth.

In the field of snobbery, Australia is an underdeveloped country; even a few British ex-colonies, regarded as under developed in all other respects, could export a great deal of snobbery to Australia and still have enough to spare for their own, internal needs.

as the determinants of high status keep shifting, so, too, naturally, will the triggers of status anxiety be altered.

By nature servile, people attempt at first glance to find signs of good breeding in the appearance of those who occupy more exalted stations.

[Partly as a consequence of male authority] prestige value always attaches to the activities of men.

In a world of upward mobility, choose downward servility.

The great always sell their society to the vanity of the little.

Aristocracy is a relative thing. And there are plenty of out-of-the-way places where the son of an upholsterer is the arbiter of fashion and reigns over a court like any young Prince of Wales.