Quotes from Ariel Gore

I don't know if my mother was a narcissist - or bi-polar or borderline. Those were words she tossed around over the years.

When I was a kid, my mother's parenting style teetered between benign neglect and intense bouts of violence.

I think there are different kinds of happiness. We know when we're happy a lot of the time, but then there are those moments that have more of an afterglow, when the happiness has more depth.

If you need help or advice, ask for it, but don't worry too much about hurting other people's feelings by not doing what they say. If your gut says no, trust it. Do what seems right.

I'm sure there were plenty of loving, attentive mothers in the 'me generation,' but none of them lived at my house.

I've never been socially outgoing, but I suspect I've gotten more and more ambivalent about making new friends. I'm irritated by how-do-you-do chit-chat, but that's how new relationships usually begin.

In our cultural history, all emotions have been more culturally acceptable to women.

Researchers warn us against walking out on married life without a dang good reason.

Your heart is the size of your fist; keep loving, keep fighting.

It is a great paradox and a great injustice that writers write because we fear death and want to leave something indestructible in our wake and, at the same time, are drawn to all the things that kill: whiskey and cigarettes, unprotected sex, and deep-fried burritos.

All those people who rejected me gave me a head-start on freedom, because the fear and obedience we are all taught, well, those things weren't getting me any love.

Maybe what shame needs to stay alive is the consent of the shamed.

Settling other people's land is an American tradition.

Poet' had always sounded like a profession to me, or a talent. But the dead American [Muriel Rukeyser, The Life of Poetry] made it sound like a faith.

Everything is freedom and everything is loneliness. Make your choice and let the rest fall away.

Nourish the world with your words, yo.

Maybe it goes without saying that if you want to become a famous writer before you're dead, you'll have to write something. But the folks in my classes with the biggest ideas and the best publicity shots ready to grace the back covers of their best-selling novels are also usually the ones who aren't holding any paper.

It's a great paradox and a great injustice that writers write because we fear death and want to leave something indestructable in our wake, and at the same time, are drawn to things that kill: whiskey and cigarette, unprotected sex and deep fried burritos. It's true that you can get away with drinking and smoking and sunbathing when you're in your teens and twenties, and it's true that rock stars are free to die at twenty-nine, but a lit star needs a long life.

With each beat, the heart pumps nearly three ounces of blood into the arteries--seventy-five to ninety gallons an hour when the body is at rest.

No one ever does the last thing on their list.

I wanted to be a writer, so I became one. How? I wrote things down.

You always thought older people were wiser. It's not that. It's just that our relatives are dead and we're able to speak freely.

I wondered at all the ways abuse invents us

If you don't like the fairy tales you've been handed, Ariel, you don't have to conform to them. You can reauthor them. You can write your story however you choose.