Hungry Heart Quotes

“Inadequacy and impostor syndrome are painful. They’re also great motivators.”
― Jennifer Weiner, Hungry Heart: Adventures in Life, Love, and Writing

“And remember-no woman ever said, on her deathbed, I wish I'd eaten less cake.”
― Jennifer Weiner, Hungry Heart: Adventures in Life, Love, and Writing

“This thing that I created, this thing I made as a woman, for other women, is worth something. It's worth exactly the same as what a similar thing, built by a man, for men, is worth.”
― Jennifer Weiner, Hungry Heart: Adventures in Life, Love, and Writing

“There is no magic weight, no magic size, no magic number on the scale where, as soon as you hit it, confetti rains down and a band starts to play and hidden doors slide open and Daniel Craig walks through them to lift you in his arms (because, thin as you are, he totally can) and carry you into the life of uninterrupted bliss that you just know could be yours, if you only wore a size two dress.”
― Jennifer Weiner, Hungry Heart: Adventures in Life, Love, and Writing

“There are friends who tell you, “Someday you’ll laugh about this.” Susan’s my best friend because, with her, “someday” is always now.”
― Jennifer Weiner, Hungry Heart: Adventures in Life, Love, and Writing

“I would write my way out of my heartbreak, write my way to a happy ending . . . and, if, by the end of it, I had a story that other people might like, that happy ending might be the publication of an actual book. Not marriage, not a reunion with Mr. Right, not the kids and the house and the white picket fence, but not nothing, either. A happy ending of a different kind.”
― Jennifer Weiner, Hungry Heart: Adventures in Life, Love, and Writing

“Back then, I didn’t understand that what was happening in my house was not happening in everyone’s house at night, when the doors were shut and the blinds were drawn. It took me just as long to sort out my physical self—how to dress in a way that flattered my shape, how to do my hair and makeup (or pay professionals to do it), how to be in a body, in the world. It took time before I could take all that pain and use it; transform all that loneliness and isolation and shame into stories.”
― Jennifer Weiner, Hungry Heart: Adventures in Life, Love, and Writing

“it was a metaphor for my life, maybe for every woman’s life. You fall, you get hurt, you get up again.”
― Jennifer Weiner, Hungry Heart: Adventures in Life, Love, and Writing

“Women’s stories matter, the stories we write, the stories we read—the big-deal winners of literary prizes, and Harlequin romances, and documentaries, and soap operas, and PBS investigations, and Lifetime movies of the week. Women’s stories matter. They tell us who we are, they give us places to explore our problems, to try on identities and imagine happy endings. They entertain us, they divert us, they comfort us when we’re lonely or alone. Women’s stories matter. And women matter, too.”
― Jennifer Weiner, Hungry Heart: Adventures in Life, Love, and Writing

“Do not postpone life until two pounds form now. Go on the trip. Wear the strapless dress. Go zip lining, or water-skiing, or swimming with the dolphins. None of us are guaranteed a future. Putting ff joy until you're the right size could mean you'll never experience it at all.”
― Jennifer Weiner, Hungry Heart: Adventures in Life, Love, and Writing

“As we get older we all learn that there isn't a finish line....or maybe there is, but it keeps moving. It's a rare moment where we look around, sigh with satisfaction, pull our spouse or kids or pets or parents closer, and say, This is perfect, or Now I have everything. Wanting is the human condition. It's what led us to invent fire and the wheel and Instagram. There's nothing wrong with desire, but just like every self-help book, bumper sticker, and issue of O magazine insists, it's not the destination that matters, but the journey, not the summit, but the climb.”
― Jennifer Weiner, Hungry Heart: Adventures in Life, Love, and Writing

“The ones who nod in sympathy when their friends talked about street harassment, but whose lived experience involved more shouts of “lose some weight” than cat calls and leers. The”
― Jennifer Weiner, Hungry Heart: Adventures in Life, Love, and Writing

“Sometimes the point isn’t to end up with something worth showing the world. Sometimes it’s just rehearsal.”
― Jennifer Weiner, Hungry Heart: Adventures in Life, Love, and Writing

“DO understand that, when all is said and done, your kids are going to find something to blame you for, no matter how hard you try, and that they will grow up to be who they were destined to be, no matter what you do. A large part of this is out of your hands. Try your best, treat yourself well, and forgive yourself as frequently as possible.”
― Jennifer Weiner, Hungry Heart: Adventures in Life, Love, and Writing

“digits.”
― Jennifer Weiner, Hungry Heart: Adventures in Life, Love, and Writing

“Note to aspiring writers: This is actually not that many rejections in the grand scheme of things. I know published writers whose rejection count is in the triple digits. Never give up. Never, never, never give up.”
― Jennifer Weiner, Hungry Heart: Adventures in Life, Love, and Writing

“I remember McPhee's notes, penciled in the margins: "If humor is tragedy plus time, this needs more time." It wasn't the first occasion I was forced to think about the line between funny and mean, between punching down, not up, to figure out how to write about the things that made me angry in a way that was powerful, not didactic or unhinged.”
― Jennifer Weiner, Hungry Heart: Adventures in Life, Love, and Writing

“I’d lost . . . ten pounds? Twelve? Enough to make me believe that if  I just kept at it I could lose the weight, the percentage of myself, that would finally make my body acceptable. Enough to make me believe that a man could like me, could look past my current incarnation and see the beauty that would be revealed when I dropped another thirty pounds.”
― Jennifer Weiner, Hungry Heart: Adventures in Life, Love, and Writing

“A writer wasn’t a body, just a byline. My words would be sharp and spiky, punchy and pointed; my stories would be swift and lean, sleek and enviable, moving fast and hitting hard. I would not, I vowed, write like a fat girl.”
― Jennifer Weiner, Hungry Heart: Adventures in Life, Love, and Writing

“I watched other kids and tried to figure out what made me different. Was it their clothes, their expressions, their hair? Was it the TV shows they talked about, the songs they sang, the way they stood with their hands in their pockets and their JanSport backpacks dangling from just one shoulder? How did some girls know, without being told, which boys to talk to and which to avoid? Why was Andrea Freeh, who was very heavy, popular with girls and boys, while Monica Levy, who was just slightly chunky, was derided as fat, with no friends at all?”
― Jennifer Weiner, Hungry Heart: Adventures in Life, Love, and Writing