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Top 70 Vivian Gornick Quotes (2025 Update)
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Vivian Gornick Quote: “We were all indulging ourselves. Nettie wanted to seduce, Mama wanted to suffer, I wanted to read. None of us knew how to discipline herself to the successful pursuit of an ideal, normal woman’s life. And indeed, none of us ever achieved it.”

51. “We were all indulging ourselves. Nettie wanted to seduce, Mama wanted to suffer, I wanted to read. None of us knew how to discipline herself to the successful pursuit of an ideal, normal woman’s life. And indeed, none of us ever achieved it.”

— Vivian Gornick

Vivian Gornick Quote: “Put romantic love at the center of a novel today, and who could be persuaded that in its pursuit the characters are going to get to something large? That love is going to throw them up against themselves in such a way that we will all learn something important about how we got to be as we are, or how the time in which we live got to be as it is. No one, it seems to me. Today, I think, love as a metaphor is an act of nostalgia, not of discovery.”

52. “Put romantic love at the center of a novel today, and who could be persuaded that in its pursuit the characters are going to get to something large? That love is going to throw them up against themselves in such a way that we will all learn something important about how we got to be as we are, or how the time in which we live got to be as it is. No one, it seems to me. Today, I think, love as a metaphor is an act of nostalgia, not of discovery.”

— Vivian Gornick

Vivian Gornick Quote: “It seems that fiction no longer produces work that makes one feel the human condition deeply.”

53. “It seems that fiction no longer produces work that makes one feel the human condition deeply.”

— Vivian Gornick

Vivian Gornick Quote: “Whatever a scientist is doing – reading, cooking, talking, playing – science thoughts are always there at the edge of the mind. They are the way the world is taken in; all that is seen is filtered through an everpresent scientific musing.”

54. “Whatever a scientist is doing – reading, cooking, talking, playing – science thoughts are always there at the edge of the mind. They are the way the world is taken in; all that is seen is filtered through an everpresent scientific musing.”

— Vivian Gornick

Vivian Gornick Quote: “Once again, as it has with irregular regularity throughout my waking life, that sickening sense of language buried deep within comes coursing through arms, legs, chest, throat. If only I could make it reach the brain, the conversation with myself might perhaps begin.”

55. “Once again, as it has with irregular regularity throughout my waking life, that sickening sense of language buried deep within comes coursing through arms, legs, chest, throat. If only I could make it reach the brain, the conversation with myself might perhaps begin.”

— Vivian Gornick

Vivian Gornick Quote: “I don’t write fiction but I do write narrative; I write memoirs that I treat like stories, so whenever I’m using somebody I actually know as a model, I am submitting them to the agenda of a storyteller, and I feel free to do what I want.”

56. “I don’t write fiction but I do write narrative; I write memoirs that I treat like stories, so whenever I’m using somebody I actually know as a model, I am submitting them to the agenda of a storyteller, and I feel free to do what I want.”

— Vivian Gornick

Vivian Gornick Quote: “I began to realize what everyone in the world knows and routinely forgets: that to be loved sexually is to be loved not for one’s actual self but for one’s ability to arouse desire in the other... Only the thoughts in one’s mind or intuitions of the spirit can attract permanently...”

57. “I began to realize what everyone in the world knows and routinely forgets: that to be loved sexually is to be loved not for one’s actual self but for one’s ability to arouse desire in the other... Only the thoughts in one’s mind or intuitions of the spirit can attract permanently...”

— Vivian Gornick

Vivian Gornick Quote: “Science, like art, religion, political theory, or psychoanalysis – is work that holds out the promise of philosophic understanding, excites in us the belief that we can ’make sense of it all.”

58. “Science, like art, religion, political theory, or psychoanalysis – is work that holds out the promise of philosophic understanding, excites in us the belief that we can ’make sense of it all.”

— Vivian Gornick

Vivian Gornick Quote: “You can’t reduce an actual human being; you’re just writing! You’re not doing anything to another person.”

59. “You can’t reduce an actual human being; you’re just writing! You’re not doing anything to another person.”

— Vivian Gornick

Vivian Gornick Quote: “I was never an activist, in the sense that I didn’t really join a lot of organizations. I wasn’t out in the streets. But what I did become was a writer. My activism was in writing.”

60. “I was never an activist, in the sense that I didn’t really join a lot of organizations. I wasn’t out in the streets. But what I did become was a writer. My activism was in writing.”

— Vivian Gornick

Vivian Gornick Quote: “Scientists do what writers do. They also live with an active interiority, only the ongoing speculation in their heads is about relations in the physical world rather than the psychological one.”

61. “Scientists do what writers do. They also live with an active interiority, only the ongoing speculation in their heads is about relations in the physical world rather than the psychological one.”

— Vivian Gornick

Vivian Gornick Quote: “Agnes Smedley also knows what the century knows: that we become what is done to us.”

62. “Agnes Smedley also knows what the century knows: that we become what is done to us.”

— Vivian Gornick

Vivian Gornick Quote: “In 1907 Edmund Gosse thought he had to leave his father to become himself; seventy years later Geoffrey Wolff knows he cannot leave his father because he has become his father.”

63. “In 1907 Edmund Gosse thought he had to leave his father to become himself; seventy years later Geoffrey Wolff knows he cannot leave his father because he has become his father.”

— Vivian Gornick

Vivian Gornick Quote: “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. 121.”

64. “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. 121.”

— Vivian Gornick

Vivian Gornick Quote: “The live, warm presence of my mother had disappeared. In its place stood this remoteness posing as Mama. Her anxiety was unbearable to me. It made me crazy. I needed her to respond, to be there with me. I needed it. Not getting what I needed, I fell into an anxiety of my own that rendered me nearly speechless.”

65. “The live, warm presence of my mother had disappeared. In its place stood this remoteness posing as Mama. Her anxiety was unbearable to me. It made me crazy. I needed her to respond, to be there with me. I needed it. Not getting what I needed, I fell into an anxiety of my own that rendered me nearly speechless.”

— Vivian Gornick

Vivian Gornick Quote: “We loved once, and we loved badly. We loved again, and again we loved badly. We did it a third time, and we were no longer living in a world free of experience. We saw that love did not make us tender, wise, or compassionate. Under its influence we gave up neither our fears nor our angers. Within ourselves we remained unchanged. The development was an astonishment: not at all what had been expected. The atmosphere became charged with revelation, and it altered us permanently as a culture.”

66. “We loved once, and we loved badly. We loved again, and again we loved badly. We did it a third time, and we were no longer living in a world free of experience. We saw that love did not make us tender, wise, or compassionate. Under its influence we gave up neither our fears nor our angers. Within ourselves we remained unchanged. The development was an astonishment: not at all what had been expected. The atmosphere became charged with revelation, and it altered us permanently as a culture.”

— Vivian Gornick

Vivian Gornick Quote: “Between what we know and what we cannot hope to know about how we come to be as we are lies an emotional dumping ground into which exceptional writers pour all the art they are capable of making.”

67. “Between what we know and what we cannot hope to know about how we come to be as we are lies an emotional dumping ground into which exceptional writers pour all the art they are capable of making.”

— Vivian Gornick

Vivian Gornick Quote: “Everyone who had ever cared to investigate the nature of human loneliness had seen that only one’s own working mind breaks the solitude of the self.”

68. “Everyone who had ever cared to investigate the nature of human loneliness had seen that only one’s own working mind breaks the solitude of the self.”

— Vivian Gornick

Vivian Gornick Quote: “The exchange will always deepen, even if the friendship does not.”

69. “The exchange will always deepen, even if the friendship does not.”

— Vivian Gornick

Vivian Gornick Quote: “This is the intimacy that will bind us all our lives, holding us forever to the task implicit in all love relations: how to connect yet not merge, how to respond yet not be absorbed, how to detach but not withdraw.”

70. “This is the intimacy that will bind us all our lives, holding us forever to the task implicit in all love relations: how to connect yet not merge, how to respond yet not be absorbed, how to detach but not withdraw.”

— Vivian Gornick

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