“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.… — Vivian Gornick Copy Share Image
“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… — Vivian Gornick Copy Share Image
Research is the live heart of the scientific life ... Greatness of position, respect for past accomplishments, the Nobel Prize itself -- none of… — Vivian Gornick Copy Share Image
“Suddenly, literature, politics, and analysis came together, and I began to think more inclusively about the emotional imprisonment of mind and spirit to which… — Vivian Gornick Copy Share Image
When I work I feel more alive than under any other circumstances. There's not an 'I love you' in the world that can match… — Vivian Gornick Copy Share Image
“And I—the girl growing in their midst, being made in their image—I absorbed them as I would chloroform on a cloth laid against my… — Vivian Gornick Copy Share Image
Before I knew that I was Jewish or a girl I knew that I was a member of the working class. At a time… — Vivian Gornick Copy Share Image
When the whole world is writing letters, it's easy to lap into the quiet within, tell the story of an hour, keep alive the… — Vivian Gornick Copy Share Image
“The live, warm presence of my mother had disappeared. In its place stood this remoteness posing as Mama. Her anxiety was unbearable to me.… — Vivian Gornick Copy Share Image
What you feel when you're writing is the relief of thinking: if you write the sentence correctly, you're clarifying. If you write the right… — Vivian Gornick Copy Share Image
No man worth his salt does not wish to be a husband and father; yet no man is raised to be a husband and… — Vivian Gornick Copy Share Image
Psychoanalysis showed me that I might be neurotic because I was a girl but, as Chekhov might have put it, I alone had to… — Vivian Gornick Copy Share Image
“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… — Vivian Gornick Copy Share Image
The desire for narration keeps on reasserting itself, so that since modernism and fiction brought narration to an end, it is sought in memoirs. — Vivian Gornick Copy Share Image
The point of women's liberation is not to stand at the door of the male world, beating our fists, and crying, 'Let me in,… — Vivian Gornick Copy Share Image
“Una mujer sabe si ama a un hombre", decía. "Si no está segura, es que no lo ama” — Vivian Gornick Copy Share Image
