The Odd Woman and the City Quotes

“There are two categories of friendship: those in which people enliven one another and those in which people must be enlivened to be with one another. In the first category one clears the decks to be together; in the second one looks for an empty space in the schedule.”
― Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City

“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...”
― Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City

“One's own best self. For centuries, this was the key concept behind any essential definition of friendship: that one's friend is a virtuous being who speaks to the virtue in oneself. How foreign such a concept to the children of the therapeutic culture! Today we do not look to see, much less affirm, our best selves in one another. To the contrary, it is the openness with which we admit to our emotional incapacities - the fear, the anger, the humiliation - that excites contemporary bonds of friendship. Nothing draws us closer to one another than the degree to which we face our deepest shame openly in one another's company... What we want is to feel known, warts and all: the more warts the better. It is the great illusion of our culture that what we confess to is who we are.”
― Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City

“Everyone used to seem so grown up," I say. "Nobody does anymore. Look at us. Forty, fifty years ago we would have been our parents. Who are we now?" ...

"They passed," Leonard says, "that's all." Fifty years ago you entered a closet marked 'marriage.' In the closet was a double set of clothes, so stiff they could stand up by themselves. A woman stepped into a dress called 'wife' and the man stepped into a suit called 'husband.' And that was it. They disappeared inside the clothes. Today, we don't pass. We're standing here naked. That's all."

He strikes a match and holds it to his cigarette.

"I'm not the right person for this life," I say.

"Who is?" he says, exhaling in my direction.”
― Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City

“I was never going to know what Keats knew before he was twenty-five, that “any set of people is as good as any other.” Now there was a Shakespearean life. Keats occupied his own experience to such a remarkable degree, he needed only the barest of human exchanges to connect with an inner clarity he himself had achieved. For that, almost anyone would do. He lived inside the heaven of a mind nourished by its own conversation. I would wander for the rest of my life in the purgatory of self-exile, always looking for the right person to talk to. This”
― Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City

“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.”
― Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City

“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.”
― Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City

“Very young, I was not able to find myself interesting without intelligent response. I required the company of minds attuned to my own, but no one around gave me back the words I needed to hear.”
― Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City

“Once again, as it has with irregular regularity throughout my waking life, that sickening sense of language buried deep within comes coursing through arms, legs, chest, throat. If only I could make it reach the brain, the conversation with myself might perhaps begin.”
― Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City

“Wharton thought no one could have freedom, but James knew no one wanted freedom.”
― Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City

“The exchange will always deepen, even if the friendship does not.”
― Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City

“All I had to do was get old enough and New York would be mine.”
― Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City

“My friendship with Leonard began with me invoking the laws of love: the ones that involved the expectancy. "We are one," I decided shortly after we met. "You are me, and I am you, and it is our obligation to save each other." It took me years for me to realize this sentiment was off the mark. What we are, in fact, is a pair of solitary travelers slogging through the country of our lives, meeting up from time to time at the outer limit to give each other border reports.”
― Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City

“I had an affair with a downtown playwright. Two things about this man: He was an ex-alcoholic, and he was phobic about leaving the city. I was too old to think him poetic, but I did.”
― Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City

“La gran ilusión de nuestra cultura es que somos lo que confesamos ser.”
― Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City

“La gran ilusión de nuestra cultura es que somos lo que confesamos ser,”
― Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City

“Al final de cada velada que pasamos juntos, uno de los dos, llevado por el entusiasmo, sugiere que nos veamos durante la semana, pero ese impulso raramente dura lo bastante como para materializarse. Lo decimos de corazón, por supuesto, al despedirnos -no hay nada que deseemos más que volver a vernos inmediatamente-, pero mientras subo el ascensor a mi apartamento, empiezo a sentir los efectos de una noche cargada de ironía y juicios negativos. No es grave, son solo heridas leves -miles de punzadas diminutas me acribillan los brazos, el cuello, el pecho-, pero en algún lugar de mi interior, en algún sitio que ni siquiera soy capaz de identificar, empiezo a encogerme ante la perspectiva de volver a sentirme así demasiado pronto.”
― Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City

“Johnson odiaba y temía la vida en un pueblo. Las calles cerradas y silenciosas lo sumían en la desesperación. En un pueblo, su presencia no encontraba reflejo. La soledad se volvía insoportable. La ciudad tenía sentido porque hacía soportable la soledad.”
― Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City

“Every night when I turn the lights out in my sixteenth-floor living room before I go to bed, I experience a shock of pleasure as I see the banks of lighted windows rising to the sky, crowding round me, and feel myself embraced by the anonymous in gathering of city dwellers. This swarm of human hives, also hanging anchored in space, is the New York design offering generic connection. The pleasure it gives soothes beyond all explanation.”
― Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City

“La desaparició del sentiment en l’amor romàntic és un drama que la majoria de nosaltres coneixem i, per això, ens pensem que podem trobar-hi una explicació. Esclaus de la intensitat generada per la passió, conferim a l’amor uns poders transformadors; imaginem que sota la seva influència serem persones noves, fins i tot completes. Quan l’esperada transformació no es materialitza, les esperances, junt amb l’enamorament, es dissolen abruptament. L’emoció de sentir que l’amant et coneix ara s’esvaeix i es transforma en ansietat de sentir-se exposat. Tant en l’amistat com en l’amor, l’expectativa que la versió expressiva (si no la millor) d’un mateix es desclourà en presència de l’estimat és essencial. Tot es planteja a partir d’aquesta desclosa.

Però, i si tot allò que tenim d’inquiet, fluid i volàtil dins nostre mina constantment la cosa que, ens sembla, més volem? I si, de fet, l’assumpció d’un jo que necessita expressivitat és una il·lusió? I si l’impuls cap a una intimitat estable es veu perpètuament amenaçat per un altre impuls igual de gran, o més i tot, cap a la desestabilització? Què passa aleshores?”
― Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City

“It’s the gene for anarchy, alive in everyone born into the wrong class, the wrong color, the wrong sex — only in some it stays quiescent, while in some it makes a holocaust — no one knows this better than me.”
― Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City

“Once again, I stared at him: only this stare was different from those other stares. A man was pressing me to do something I did not want to do, and pressing me in a manner he would never have applied to another man: by telling me that I didn't know what I wanted [...] It was as though an invisible membrane had fallen between me and my lover, one fine enough to be penetrated by desire but opaque enough to obscure human fellowship. The person on the other side of the membrane seemed as unreal to me as I felt myself to be to him [...] the memory of that fine, invisible separation haunted me; and more often than I like to remember, I saw it glistening as I gazed into the face of a man who loved me but was not persuaded that I needed what he needed to feel like a human being.”
― Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City

“No, what mattered here was that Alice had spent a lifetime struggling to become a conscious human being whose primary delight was the use of her own mind; and now she was locked up in an atmosphere constructed to ignore—nay, discard—that long, valiant effort, when the only thing owed a human being—yes, from first to last—was to have it honored.”
― Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City

“I nearly weep. All I had ever wanted was that my mother be glad to be alive in my presence. I am still certain that if she had been, I’d have grown up whole inside. “Imagine,” I say to Leonard. “She’s so old and she can still do this to me.” “It’s not how old she is that’s remarkable,” he says. “It’s how old you are.”
― Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City

“It has come to my attention lately,” he says, “that sales are up on suntan lotion and sunblock. Now who do you think are the customers for this item? I’ll tell you who. White people, that’s who. Not you or I, brother. No, it’s white people.” His voice deepens. “Now what do you think of a people who keep telling us they’re superior, and…” Without warning he pauses, his eyes squeeze shut, and he screams, “They can’t even make it in the fuckin’ sun!” Back to broadcast news. “You—” He points calmly at the heads of the fleeing crowd. “The white people. Don’t even belong. On the planet.”
― Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City