79 Quotes by Vivian Gornick
- Author Vivian Gornick
-
Quote
Man is free only when he is doing what the deepest self likes, and knowing what the deepest self likes, ah! that takes some diving.
- Share
- Author Vivian Gornick
-
Quote
Just as once upon a time you could make the experience of religion or nature a great metaphor, so now it is with love. It’s just not the kind of thing you can put at the center of a work of literature and have it really reveal us to ourselves.
- Share
- Author Vivian Gornick
-
Quote
I don’t know if memoirs can produce literary work of the first order. But I do know that novels are doing it only rarely.
- Share
- Author Vivian Gornick
-
Quote
Agnes Smedley also knows what the century knows: that we become what is done to us.
- Share
- Author Vivian Gornick
-
Quote
Collectively speaking, if we chart the internal mood of every successful movement for social integration we find that, ironically, with each advance made it is anger – not hope, much less elation – that deepens in the petitioners at the gate. Ironic but not surprising: to petition repeatedly is to be reminded repeatedly that one is not wanted, never had been, never will be. 121.
- Share
- Author Vivian Gornick
-
Quote
I began to realize what everyone in the world knows and routinely forgets: that to be loved sexually is to be loved not for one’s actual self but for one’s ability to arouse desire in the other... Only the thoughts in one’s mind or intuitions of the spirit can attract permanently...
- Share
- Author Vivian Gornick
-
Quote
If she would work he wouldn’t have to keep her in the house. She wouldn’t be crazy, and she could tell him to go to hell. Did you ever think about that, my brilliant daughter? That maybe she’s crazy because she can’t tell him to go to hell? When a woman can’t tell a man to go to hell, I have noticed, she is often crazy.
- Share