Quotes from Gina Barreca

I'm fine but, wow, thanks for asking! Very few people ask how Mom is doing; we usually get asked how baby is doing, and that's that." My simple "How are YOU?" was met with a complicated response when I asked my niece Anne what her life was like now that she had become a mom. This surprised me not at all.

November makes me anxious. This year's holidays are approaching with a particularly lean and nervous look, like coyotes dressed as reindeer and ready for a tussle. Nothing feels right.

There was something wrong; nobody else had to tell me. Writing it down made me see it. I'd told myself, as if writing to another person.

Time doesn't offer a refund.

We all know that history is personal, so here is my brief "Autobiography by Bathroom." I've titled it "To Pee or Not to Pee." Not to get all Shakespearean or anything, but the process does involve shocks that flesh is heir to, the baring of bodkins, swearing, and what can feel like a sea of troubles.

We want to possess what they're not making any more, what not many others can get and what will distinguish us from others.

The holidays make her feel as if she's supposed to be in a cuddle, since everybody else suddenly seems paired off, like mittens, slippers or AA batteries.

There's a price to be paid when you raise your daughter to be nice, and she's not the only one who's going to pay it. You'll be right there beside her, trapped by inconvenience, inflexibility and double standards.

Here's the premise: you're in a bunker in the post-apocalyptic world. (I'm assuming that, by the date of publication, this will still be a "premise.") You've managed, almost magically, to bring with you the 10 movies, but only 10 movies, you'll be able to watch for the rest of your days.

India's latest latrine triumph will improve the lives of many of its citizens. Given what else has been going on in the rest of the world, any reports of currently "defecation-free" zones, literal or metaphorical, are welcome.

Civil conversations about personal perspective will be welcome in the bunker, if only because we'll be cognizant of the fact that incivility didn't work out too well, given the whole apocalypse thing.

Our beliefs define us. And who wants to be undefined in today's world? So we scrape together convenient truths and build our identities out of them.

Those of us who have never been in the military don't understand what it is like to serve in the military.

After a certain age, you finally become the indisputable authority on the subject of yourself.

Time doesn't offer a refund. We don't get to try on the future the way we try on a bathing suit and then decide we don't like it once we see what it looks like in natural light.

I'd say it's time for women to make a stand. And it's far, far easier to make a stand when you're wearing comfortable shoes.

Every year has an expiration date, as does every lifetime. Even the finest wine can't age forever.

We don't want to settle down anymore; we've been settled, like some western township, and now we want to kick up the dust and tear down the fences. Not only won't we settle down; we also won't settle for less than what we've always wanted: a good time and a fair fight.

I was raised a Roman Catholic, but it was the kind of domesticated Catholicism that focused mostly on the length of your skirt rather than, say, the depth of your penitential observance

Comics know that time plus pain equals humor and that we can redeem even awful moments from the past by translating them into a shared experience.

Having an unresolved Bad Boyfriend issue is like carrying around credit card debt . . . which can still show up and wreck your rating.

A truly thoughtful lover would not attempt to arouse you with the subtlety of a chimp trying to dial a rotary phone.

When the Apocalypse comes, you'll find me pushing Marie Antoinette out of the way and saying, 'Let me eat cake! Forget them; I want the cake! Two helpings! I have some friends with me! Is there coffee with the cake, Marie? I'm just asking.

Just because you've become tired of emotion, or outgrown it, doesn't mean it'll be simple to free yourself from it. It must be dismantled, not ignored.