155 Quotes by Gail Sheehy

And to what degree does the young woman invent the man she marries? She often sees in him possibilities that no one else recognizes and pictures herself within his dream as the one person who truly understands. Such illusions are the stuff of which the twenties are made.3.

The other real forces urging young people into marriages generally sift down to one of the following: the need for safety, the need to fill some vacancy in themselves, the need to get away from home, the need for prestige or practicality. Safety.

Doubts immobilize. Believing that we are independent and competent enough to master the external tasks constantly fortifies us in our attempts to become so. It is only later we discover that logic cannot penetrate the loneliness of the human soul. One.

Further discomfort from these new realities afflicts men who expected to reach a certain level by dint of their white maleness but who now have to make room for women and minorities as well as their own generational bulge. The old boy network doesn’t help them much anymore.

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter into another!

If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we are not really living. Growth demands a temporary surrender of security.

Changes are not predictable; but to deny them is to be an accomplice to one's own unnecessary vegetation.

Every young girl tries to smother her first love in possessiveness. Oh, what tears and rejection await the girl who imbues her first delicate match with fantasies of permanence, expecting that he at this gelatinous stage will fit with her in a finished puzzle for all the days.

If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we are not really living. Growth demands a temporary surrender of security.