Top 40 Judith Guest Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Autonomy is the whole thing; it’s what unhappy people are missing. They have given the power to run their lives to other people.”

— Judith Guest

2. “Life is not a series of pathetic, meaningles actions. Some of them are so far from pathetic, so far from meaningless as to be beyond reason, maybe beyond forgiveness.”

— Judith Guest

3. “Make peace with what is.”

— Judith Guest

4. “People that keep stiff upper lips find that it’s hard to smile.”

— Judith Guest

5. “Writers don’t write to inform other people, they write to find out something themselves.”

— Judith Guest

6. “Feeling is not selective, I keep telling you that. You can’t feel pain, you aren’t gonna feel anything else, either.”

— Judith Guest

7. “My success is not who I am.”

— Judith Guest

8. “The small seed of despair cracks open and sends experimental tendrils upward to the fragile skin of calm holding him together.”

— Judith Guest

9. “Haven’t lost your sense of humor after all but your sense of identity is what seems to have been misplaced. No. Wrong. You don’t lose what you never had.”

— Judith Guest

10. “Riding the train gives him too much time to think, he has decided. Too much thinking can ruin you.”

— Judith Guest

11. “Geez, if I could get through to you, kiddo, that depression is not sobbing and crying and giving vent, it is plain and simple reduction of feeling. Reduction, see? Of all feeling. People who keep stiff upper lips find that it’s damn hard to smile.”

— Judith Guest

12. “Depression is not sobbing and crying and giving vent, it is plain and simple reduction of feeling.”

— Judith Guest

13. “Depending on the reality one must face, one may prefer to opt for illusion.”

— Judith Guest

14. “Two separate, distinct personalities, not separate at all, but inextricably bound, soul and body and mind, to each other, how did we get so far apart so fast?”

— Judith Guest

15. “A little advice about feelings kiddo; don’t expect it always to tickle.” Dr, Berger.”

— Judith Guest

16. “And do not be paralyzed. It is better to move than to be unable to move, because you fear loss so much: loss of order, loss of security, loss of predictability.”

— Judith Guest

17. “He hangs on now, pressing his hand lightly against the wall, below the window, waiting for the familiar arrow of pain. Only there is none. An oddly pleasant swell of memory, a wave of warmth flooding over him, sliding back, slowly. It is a first.”

— Judith Guest

18. “Because it has always been easier to believe himself capable of evil than to accept evil in others.”

— Judith Guest

19. “Happy!” She looks at him. “Oh, Ward! You give us all the definition, will you? But first you’d better check on those kids. Every day, to make sure they’re good and safe, that.”

— Judith Guest

20. “Some people have an unrealistic expectation when it comes to getting published; the fact is most publishers will turn down your work which is why you need to be persistent.”

— Judith Guest

21. “I think living the blessed life is the luck of the draw.”

— Judith Guest

22. “And if you ever do a survey, you’ll find that people prefer illusion to reality, ten to one. Twenty, even.”

— Judith Guest

23. “With my friends, I don’t feel pressure to be someone other than who I am.”

— Judith Guest

24. “Make notes – I’ve lost more material than I’ve ever written. Contrary to popular opinion, it’s not still up there in one’s brain. It’s in outer space and it ain’t coming back.”

— Judith Guest

25. “It’s always obvious to me when someone is looking at me with an idea of who I am and hoping that that’s the person I’m going to be. No matter how subtle it is, it’s there, and you want to give them who they really want. But it ain’t me.”

— Judith Guest

26. “Jesus but people got weird when they lived alone.”

— Judith Guest

27. “Don’t put anyone out of your heart, there’s room for all.”

— Judith Guest

28. “It’s true that every day away from work requires two more days to get back into it.”

— Judith Guest

29. “The ‘creator’ and the ‘editor’ – two halves of the writer whole – should sleep in separate rooms.”

— Judith Guest

30. “You have to live your life according to what comforts you, not what the rest of your family thinks you ought to be doing.”

— Judith Guest

31. “For me being depressed means you can spend all day in bed, and still not get a good night’s rest.”

— Judith Guest

32. “I notice when I’m on these trips, I read like mad. It’s the only thing that seems to center me, bring me back to remembering who I am. Or forgetting who I am!”

— Judith Guest

33. “To have a reason to get up in the morning, it is necessary to have some kind of guiding principle. A belief of some kind.”

— Judith Guest

34. “I keep telling you that feeling is not selective. You can’t feel pain, you aren’t gonna feel anything else either.”

— Judith Guest

35. “Some people with awful cards can be successful because of how they deal with the tragedies they’re handed, and that seems courageous to me.”

— Judith Guest

36. “I’ve never been one to tear the social fabric.”

— Judith Guest

37. “I can write for a long time on one novel and not get tired.”

— Judith Guest

38. “And once I wanted to be a fireman. Then.”

— Judith Guest

39. “Sometimes you are being interviewed by someone and you think, if I knew this person they’d be my best friend. Other times you’re being interviewed by a complete jerk.”

— Judith Guest

40. “Ours was not a political household, when I was growing up.”

— Judith Guest

41. “He closes his eyes. A jungle in there, inside his head. He opens them quickly.”

— Judith Guest

42. “I am also working on a couple of short stories for anthologies. This is new to me and Im enjoying it.”

— Judith Guest

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

43. “Maybe you gotta feel lousy sometime, in order to feel better. A little advice, kiddo, about feeling. Don’t think too much about it. And don’t expect it always to tickle.”

— Judith Guest

44. “He had left off being a perfectionist then, when he discovered that not promptly kept appointments, not a house circumspectly clean, not membership in Onwentsia, or the Lake Forest Golf and Country Club, or the Lawyers’ Club, not power, or knowledge, or goodness – not anything – cleared you through the terrifying office of chance; that it is chance and not perfection that rules the world.”

— Judith Guest

45. “It’s all right, Con, to feel anxious. Allow yourself a couple of bad days, now and then, will you?”

— Judith Guest

46. “First. I give a damn. About everything you do.”

— Judith Guest

47. “He will be eighteen in January, but he looks younger than that, and vulnerable; yet older at the same time. Tired. His face is drawn. He has an urge to shield him, but how? There is no way. No way at all.”

— Judith Guest