Top 200 Emily Nagoski Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 4 of 5

151. “Givers are not supposed to need anything. If they dare to ask for or, God forbid, demand anything, that’s a violation of their role as a giver and they may be punished. And if a giver doesn’t obediently and sweetly hand over whatever a being wants, for that, too, the giver may be punished, shamed, or even destroyed.”

— Emily Nagoski

152. “If you’re feeling not just frustrated and challenged, but helpless, isolated, and trapped, like you want to hide in a cave, or like you’d rather put your hand in a toilet full of tadpoles than spend one more day doing the thing, you should definitely quit whatever it is.”

— Emily Nagoski

153. “Because story goes where science can’t.”

— Emily Nagoski

154. “When we see women who aren’t trying to control their appearance or their emotions so that they aren’t making anyone uncomfortable, or who use their time, money, and labor to improve their own well-being rather than someone else’s, “What’s the matter with her?” we say to ourselves. “If I have to follow the rules, so does she! She needs to get back in line.” And we call that unruly woman fat or bossy or full of herself. As if those are bad things.”

— Emily Nagoski

155. “A final caution: Too often, we mistake dealing with the stressors for dealing with the stress.”

— Emily Nagoski

156. “Positive Social Interaction.”

— Emily Nagoski

157. “Perfectionists set goals that are impossible – and if they somehow manage to achieve a goal, they assume that goal must be worthless and they set another, even more impossible goal. Which puts them in a state of perpetual dissatisfaction.”

— Emily Nagoski

158. “Novices who are thoroughly incompetent rate themselves as very confident in their ability to do a thing they’ve just learned to do. By contrast, genuine experts know how difficult their work is, so they are realistic about their competence and thus rate their confidence in their own abilities as moderate, even as their performance is, of course, expert-level.”

— Emily Nagoski

159. “Why is it dying?” to “Wow!” And it’s this: responsive desire.1 Responsive, in contrast to spontaneous desire.”

— Emily Nagoski

160. “But then, when women start to think concretely about it, they begin to discover a sense that they need their self-criticism in order to stay motivated. We believe it does us good to torture ourselves, at least a little bit. As in: “If I stop beating myself up for the ways I’m not perfect, that’s like admitting to the world – and to myself – that I’ll never be perfect, that I’m permanently inadequate! I need my self-criticism in order to maintain hope and to motivate myself to get better.”

— Emily Nagoski

161. “Pessimists, by contrast, don’t always expect good outcomes and may view bad things, if they happen, as symptomatic of larger-scale problems that could have lasting impact.”

— Emily Nagoski

162. “Meaning is not made by the terrible thing you experienced; it is made by the ways you survive.”

— Emily Nagoski

163. “But you can recognize the pain as part of the healing, and you can trust your heart to heal, just as you trust your bones to heal, knowing that it will gradually hurt less and less as you recover.”

— Emily Nagoski

164. “Each person’s experience of survival is unique, but it often includes a kind of disengaged unreality.”

— Emily Nagoski

165. “When she was happy and relaxed, she had one set of opinions about herself: self-confident and self-compassionate. When she was overwhelmed, she had an entirely different set of opinions about herself: self-critical and even self-abusive.”

— Emily Nagoski

166. “Self-compassion is being patient with yourself through that process – and being patient with yourself when you need to take a break.”

— Emily Nagoski

167. “To feel normal is to feel that you belong.”

— Emily Nagoski

168. “Positive reappraisal involves recognizing that sitting in traffic is worth it. It means deciding that the effort, the discomfort, the frustration, the unanticipated obstacles, and even the repeated failure have value – not just because they are steps toward a worthwhile goal, but because you reframe difficulties as opportunities for growth and learning.3.”

— Emily Nagoski

169. “Affection. When friendly chitchat with colleagues doesn’t cut it, when you’re too stressed out for laughter, deeper connection with a loving presence is called for. Most often, this comes from some loving and beloved person who likes, respects, and trusts you, whom you like, respect, and trust.”

— Emily Nagoski

170. “And it’s a new kind of pain; it can’t be managed by the same strategies you’ve been using to manage the pain of the whip. You were good at managing that old kind of pain, and now you have to learn a whole new way to deal with this whole new kind of pain. As one client of “compassionate mind therapy” put it, if they started practicing self-compassion, they “would open up a well of unbearable sadness.”13.”

— Emily Nagoski

171. “2. Reserve thirty minutes of each day for a “stress-reducing conversation.” If your stress-reducing conversation partner is your life partner, you might also add a weekly hour-long “state of the union” conversation. Research recommends these as the standards for sustaining a satisfying relationship.39.”

— Emily Nagoski

172. “The solution is to practice replacing self-criticism with self-kindness.”

— Emily Nagoski

173. “Responsive desire. Not “passion,” not “spark,” but pleasure, trust, and mutuality. That’s the fundamental empirical reason to center pleasure over spark.”

— Emily Nagoski

174. “You can chart the progress of women in America by the things Disney heroines sing about in their “I Want” songs.”

— Emily Nagoski

175. “Flight is fear – avoidance – whereas fight is anger – approach – but they’re both the “GO!” stress response of the sympathetic nervous system. They tell you to do something.”

— Emily Nagoski

176. “Why we fall in love is attachment, which is sort of a biological pursuit of wholeness.”

— Emily Nagoski

177. “Self-criticism is associated with worse health outcomes, both mental and physical, and more loneliness.”

— Emily Nagoski

178. “But often there’s a huge resistant knot of beliefs that has to be untangled before the person can get there.”

— Emily Nagoski

179. “We’re not saying that “beautiful” is what your body should be; we’re saying beautiful is what your body already is.”

— Emily Nagoski

180. “This is the most common reason we hear when people resist self-compassion. They’re worried that if they stop beating themselves up, they’ll lose all motivation, they’ll just sit around watching Real Housewives of Anywhere and eating Lucky Charms in a bowl full of Bud Light.”

— Emily Nagoski

181. “That’s why it’s so important that we give it a name: We call it “the Feels,” and it’s nothing to fear. It’s a normal, healthy part of completing the cycle, a physiological reaction that will end on its own, usually lasting just a few minutes. Feels usually happen in extreme cases where the stress response cycle is interrupted suddenly and not allowed to complete. It’s part of the healing process following a traumatic event or long-term, intense stress.”

— Emily Nagoski

182. “Emotions are physiological cascades that want to complete their cycles, and they will complete those cycles when you allow them to; they want to be travelers, not residents. They want to move on. Let them.”

— Emily Nagoski

183. “Ask your closest friends to describe the “real you,” the characteristics of your personality and your life that are at the core of your best self.”

— Emily Nagoski

184. “Great! Just notice any apparently causeless emotions or sensations or trembling and say, “Ah. There’s some Feels.”

— Emily Nagoski

185. “Your brain has a built-in mechanism to assess when it’s time to quit. Listen to its quiet voice. Or do a worksheet; sometimes that’s easier.”

— Emily Nagoski

186. “But the best romance novels are the ones where the se isn’t just gratuitous for the sake of entertainment.”

— Emily Nagoski

187. “You can’t make someone be patient any more than you can make someone have an orgasm. You create a great context, and then allow it to happen.”

— Emily Nagoski

188. “Your sexuality is not a problem you have to solve or a disorder that needs to be treated. Your sexuality is a garden you can cultivate.”

— Emily Nagoski

189. “As Perel puts it in her TEDx talk, “In desire, we want a bridge to cross.”

— Emily Nagoski

190. “Being with the tribe doesn’t replace the Feels built into completing the cycle. We need to discharge the stress response, complete the cycle, before our bodies can move on.”

— Emily Nagoski

191. “Concrete. Specific. Detailed.”

— Emily Nagoski

192. “If you want to try using this principle rationally, all you have to do is write four lists: What are the benefits of continuing? What are the benefits of stopping? What are the costs of continuing? What are the costs of stopping?”

— Emily Nagoski

193. “Choose what feels right for you and ignore what doesn’t feel right.”

— Emily Nagoski

194. “There is and always will be a chasm between you and expected-you. What matters is not the size of the chasm or the nature of the chasm or anything else. What matters is how you manage it – which is to say, how you relate to your madwoman. Turn toward that self-critical part of you with kindness and compassion. Thank her for the hard work she has done to help you survive.”

— Emily Nagoski

195. “And then you look at those four lists and make a decision based on your estimates of maximizing benefit and minimizing cost. Remember to consider both the long-term and the short-term costs and benefits. And if you decide to continue, remember to include completing the cycle in your plan.”

— Emily Nagoski

196. “Meaning is often misunderstood as “the thing we’ll find at the end of the tunnel,” but it’s not. It’s why we go through the tunnel, regardless of what we find on the other end.”

— Emily Nagoski

197. “Attachment is love.”

— Emily Nagoski

198. “Difficult feelings are not dangerous because they, like all feelings, are tunnels. When you go all the way through them, you get to the light at the end. They may be uncomfortable, for sure; that’s kind of their point. When you experience them, that’s your embodied mind alerting you that it perceives a potential problem or a threat. But the feelings themselves are not dangerous, just as a lifeguard’s whistle alerting everyone to get out of the ocean is not dangerous.”

— Emily Nagoski

199. “Let’s think about what this does to just one system, the cardiovascular: Chronically activated stress response means chronically increased blood pressure, which is like constantly turning a firehose on in your blood vessels, when those vessels were designed by evolution to handle only a gently flowing stream. The increased wear and tear on your blood vessels leads to increased risk for heart disease. That’s how chronic stress leads to life-threatening illness.”

— Emily Nagoski

200. “Every Disney heroine has an “I Want” song, in which they explain what’s missing in their lives. Moana feels called by the ocean. Tiana is “Almost There,” saving money to start her own restaurant. Belle wants “adventure in the great wide somewhere.” The tradition goes all the way back to Snow White, singing “Someday My Prince Will Come.” You can chart the progress of women in America by the things Disney heroines sing about in their “I Want” songs.”

— Emily Nagoski