There's nothing wrong with keeping your mouth shut if you don't have anything nice to say.
I don't think any writer chooses what his or her work is called.
My publisher feels that my readers are loyal to the voice of my stories, the characters I'm creating.
When an older writer tries to tell a younger writer through a review what kind of career she should be pursuing, it tends to speak to the reviewer's anxieties rather than the book itself.
If you put a pink cover on something, critics make a certain set of assumptions and may not even read the book. But my readers are happy with it.
There are a lot of women like me in the world, and we rarely get to see ourselves.
Back in the day, when I was starting out, I'd get five or 10 emails and I'd respond to every one. But after my third or fourth book it got too time-consuming.
The idea you can tell a writer of a specific religion to stop writing about that religion is presumptuous.
If you get the you-are-a-genius label, it can limit you. Because I'm not so scrutinized, I have more freedom. And that let's me write what I want.
I love it when people ask if Jennifer Weiner is a pen name. Um, if I wanted a pen name I could have done a LOT better than this!
We dated in our early 20s, when we were working at the same newspaper. We broke up, got back together and broke up again. I wanted to get married and have kids, but he wasn't ready. So I married someone else, had my daughters and the marriage ended ... and there was Bill. He'd never gotten married and was finally, finally ready. We discovered that we were still each other's favorite people to talk to.
I have the best divorce of anyone I've heard of.
I struggle with the fact that men's popular fiction is talked about differently. Books like mine don't get as many reviews and probably won't win any prizes, but they entertain the pants off of hundreds of thousands of women.
Stephen King writes mass fiction but gets reviewed by the New York Times and writes for the New Yorker. Critics say to me, "Shut up and enjoy your money," and I think, OK, I'll shut up and enjoy my money, but why does Stephen King get to enjoy his money and get reviewed on the cover of the New York Times Sunday Book Review?
I think there are a lot of books about thin, attractive people having thin, attractive people's problems. I'm better set up to tell a different story.
I'm going to continue writing. I'll always be a storyteller. But I'm also taking time to enjoy my life.
I have these "pinch me" moments when I realize I got to be the thing I wanted to be growing up. I'm right where I belong.
I'd love to spend a day being supermodel beautiful.
My lazy, unfair assumption is that everything's easier when you're young and stunning. And maybe it is! But I'd like to see for myself.
I love it when people ask who my influences are... or what my favorite part of my last book was... or the last great book I read.
I think I'm much more comfortable talking about other books than my own!
I was 45 when I wrote most of this book [Hungry Heart ], at what felt like a halfway point in my life, and I thought, If I can't be honest now, when will it happen? It was so hard to step away from the [protection of] fiction, but I'm ready to talk start telling their truth.
Do I want to spend my diminished working hours writing or answering email? Now I have somebody read through them. If someone has something really important to tell me I write back. Otherwise they get the auto reply.
