263 Quotes by Meg Wolitzer

When women got into positions of power, they calibrated and recalibrated tenderness and strength, modulating and correcting. Power and love didn’t often live side by side. If one came in, the other might go.

Because the truth is, the world will probably whittle your daughter down. But a mother never should.

Maybe that was what it was like to be a writer: Even with the eyes closed, you could see.

Everybody has a theme. You talk to somebody awhile, and you realize they have one particular thing that rules them. The best you can do is a variation on the theme, but that’s about it.

When do I stop? When I’m tewnty-five? Thirty? Thirty-five? Forty? Or right this minute? Nobody tell s you how long you should keep doing something before you give up forever.

He couldn’t tell her that what we wanted now, more than anything, was to fall asleep beside her. No touching, no kissing, no stimulation. No sensation, no consciousness. Just the act of sleeping beside someone you liked to be with. Maybe that was love.

I’ve always sort of felt that you prepare yourself over the course of your whole life for the big moments, you know? But when they happen, you sometimes feel totally unready for them, or even that they’re not what you thought. And that’s what makes them strange. The reality is really different from the fantasy.

He was like a long beaker in chemistry class, and the top was always bubbling over because some interesting process was taking place inside.

Self-preservation is as important as generosity. Because if you don’t preserve yourself, keep enough for yourself, then of course you have nothing to give.