79 Quotes by Vivian Gornick

  • Author Vivian Gornick
  • Quote

    Between what we know and what we cannot hope to know about how we come to be as we are lies an emotional dumping ground into which exceptional writers pour all the art they are capable of making.

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  • Author Vivian Gornick
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    Nettie, it quickly developed, had no gift for mothering. Many women have no gift for it. They mimic the recalled gestures and mannerisms of the women they’ve been trained to become and hope for the best.

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  • Author Vivian Gornick
  • Quote

    -No lo sé. Lo único que sé es que es lista, que se merece una formación y que la va a tener. Éstos son los Estados Unidos. Las chicas no son vacas que pacen a la espera de que las crucen con un toro.

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  • Author Vivian Gornick
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    As I saw myself moving ever farther toward the social margin, nothing healed me of a sore and angry heart like a walk through the city. To see in the street the fifty different ways people struggle to remain human—the variety and inventiveness of survival techniques—was to feel the pressure relieved, the overflow draining off. I felt in my nerve endings the common refusal to go under.

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  • Author Vivian Gornick
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    New York isn’t jobs, they reply, it’s temperament. Most people are in New York because they need evidence—in large quantities—of human expressiveness; and they need it not now and then, but every day. That is what they need. Those who go off to the manageable cities can do without; those who come to New York cannot.

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