Quotes from Gina Barreca

I personally translated the word 'vendetta' as Italian for 'What do you mean, "you want to see other women"?

Almost 30 years ago, I started seeking help from a counselor with a master's of social work in New York City, but we were never a good match. It was like being in a bad relationship, except the guy could actually bill my health insurance company for lousy dates.

Like love, breakfast is best when made at home.

My mother thinks Mick Jagger is a foreign car.

Once we hit forty, women only have about four taste buds left: one for vodka, one for wine, one for cheese, and one for chocolate.

Fate gives us relatives for one reason: so that we have to learn how to deal with people we'd otherwise never know.

My therapist has helped me learn to understand that if you don't unpack your own emotional baggage it's no longer baggage--it's deadweight.

While many things have changed, some things haven't changed enough.

Ever notice there are no clocks in stores? It's like casinos; they don't want you to know how much time you've spent dropping your quarters.

A stark sense of isolation encloses anyone who looks outward for validation.

Here's to looking every new mother in the eye, not just smiling at the baby, and asking her "How are YOU?" Here's to listening for her answer.

Ever look at a sink full of dishes and think, "Why don't I just bury these in the backyard?

When I was in my early 30s and appeared on CNN, Oprah, 20/20 and Entertainment Tonight, my loved ones didn't say, "Good job!" My loved ones said, "The camera adds more than 20 pounds." One detail-oriented aunt said "Not for nothing, but don't wear red. You look like an ad for Red Lobster.

If you ask a server for a seriously old wine in my neighborhood, they'll look at you funny and then bring you a half-finished glass from somebody else's table.

Like most women, I've spent far too much time shuffling around this mortal coil looking for non-horror-show toilets. Few of my male counterparts partake of this quest. Instead, with the cheerful insouciance of Labrador puppies, they regard the earth as their urinal.

Given that the shared understanding of truth has been central to language, religion and society, when we ignore small lies, we inflict damage on the larger truth. This is not holiness we're talking about, but wholeness and integrity.

Maybe it's because I was the youngest or maybe it's because I was girl, but I've spent much of my life expecting to be chastised for asking stupid questions.

Not only do women hold up half the sky; we do it while carrying a 500-pound purse.

Ask a woman if she's ambitious and she'll look at you as if you just asked whether she sticks pins in puppies for fun. Ask a woman if she's competitive and she'll look at you as if you suggested that she's a hooker.

There are now skin products supposedly created with 24-karat gold extract. I guess if financial times got really tough, you could always pawn your own head.

Increasingly political, assertive, articulate, and outspoken as we age, many of us become, paradoxically, the girls we were once: wild, hearty, courageous, and playful.

Words can be as irrevocable as an action. They can cut as deeply as a surgeon's scalpel.

When you enter your next relationship, you become the person you split up with.

I've been married for a long time and there are days when I still wonder, 'Excuse me, but who is this man?