The Men in My Life Quotes

“...the men are undone by the need to master, and the women by the power of self-doubt.”
― Vivian Gornick, The Men in My Life

“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.”
― Vivian Gornick, The Men in My Life

“Suddenly, literature, politics, and analysis came together, and I began to think more inclusively about the emotional imprisonment of mind and spirit to which all human beings are heir. In the course of analytic time, it became apparent that -- with or without the burden of social justice -- the effort required to attain any semblance of inner freedom was extraordinary.

Great literature, I then realized, is a record not of the achievement, but of the effort.”
― Vivian Gornick, The Men in My Life

“[V S Naipaul] brings to [literary narrative] an extraordinary capacity for making art out of lucid thought. Observe hard, think even harder, figure out what you are thinking in the simplest, clearest language, and you will arrive at narrative: that is his credo.”
― Vivian Gornick, The Men in My Life

“In the late 1950s Leslie Fiedler observed that the Jewish-American novelist had internalized the stereotype of the Jew in American literature. When he sat down to write, he had trouble shaking off the hostile or sentimental images that appeared regularly in the work of gentile writers. It is impossible to overestimate the value of such an insight.”
― Vivian Gornick, The Men in My Life

“It is fortification from the inside out that is wanted—the kind accomplished only by those prepared to do batter for a piece of emotional ground that must be taken again and again before it is actually secured.”
― Vivian Gornick, The Men in My Life

“As Anton Chekhov so memorably put it, 'Others made me a slave but I must squeeze the slave out of me drop by drop.”
― Vivian Gornick, The Men in My Life

“i could not but be moved -- by the great and the humble alike -- to pity and admiration for those who demonstrated repeatedly that to ' be and do' is not a given.”
― Vivian Gornick, The Men in My Life