263 Quotes by Meg Wolitzer

You're telling me that because of the Internet, and the availability of every experience, every whim, every tool, sudden everyone's an artist? But here's the thing: if everyone's an artist, then no one is.

Faith Frank hired me, originally, based on nothing. She took me in and she taught me things, and more than that she gave me permission. I think that's what the people who change our lives always do. They give us permission to be the person we secretly really long to be but maybe don't feel we're allowed to be.

Being alone was something that Faith had perfected over the years. When you were alone you didn’t have to worry about every little detail on your body, whether your legs were like prickly pears or whether after a cocktail party you were Brie-breathed. Unlike many people she knew, she often preferred her own company.

The idea that something had been done to you seemed to implicate you, even though no one said it did, making your body—which usually lived in darkness beneath your clothing—suddenly live in light. Forever, if someone found out, you would be a person with a body that had been violated, breached. Also, forever you would be a person with a body that was visible and imaginable.

Why are we so hard on ourselves?” Asked someone with great plaintiveness. Faith thought, it’s not that I’m so hard on myself exactly, it’s that I’ve learned to adopt the views of men as if they were my own.

The human face had too possibilities, and they just kept coming in a fast-moving slide show, one after another.

Corporate America had tried to get women to behave as badly as men, Faith Frank said, but women did not have to capitulate. They could be strong and powerful, all the while keeping their integrity and decency.

Are you afraid of me? I mean, I read in a book... that people are scared off by people with diseases because it reminds them of their own mortality and stuff.

Susannah was lonely; I knew that about her, could see it among all the other small trophies of unhappiness that she lined up on triumphant display for me, the way children often do, providing an entire museum of disappointments and inviting the parents in, as if to say: You see? You see how you fucked me up and what it led to? It led to this!