Every work [of literature] has both a situation and a story. The situation is the context or circumstance, sometimes the plot; the… — Vivian Gornick Copy Share Image
Love can't be a metaphor anymore. If you try to make literature out of it, it doesn't work. — Vivian Gornick Copy Share Image
Just as once upon a time you could make the experience of religion or nature a great metaphor, so now it is… — 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 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… — Vivian Gornick Copy Share
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 when I had not yet grasped the significance of the fact that in my house English was a second language, or that I wore dresses while my brother wore pants, I knew--and I knew it was… — Vivian Gornick Copy Share
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 father and no man would ever conceive of those relationships as instruments of his prime function in life. Yet every woman is raised, still, to believe that the fulfillment of these relationships is her prime function… — Vivian Gornick Copy Share
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
![“Every work [of literature] has both a situation and a story. The situation is the context or circumstance, sometimes the plot; the story is the emotional experience that preoccupies the writer: the insight, the wisdom, the thing one has come to say” quote by Vivian Gornick](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/38a/vivian-gornick-8241_books_every-work-of-literature-has-both-a-situ_1566826.jpg)
