Quotes from Marcy Dermansky

Protecting yourself from failure is probably not a good way to live.

That's the wonderful thing about writing, you can take things you haven't done properly in your own life and make it better in fiction.

While I was not entirely satisfied with the circumstances of my existence, I felt like the possibility of improvement still existed. That I could make happiness happen.

And that is one of the problems of your generation. All sex. No romance. No love.

I was brand-new in San Francisco, right out of college, and I thought it was thrilling, a guy buying me a drink. I didn't think, how tacky, this creep is buying me a drink. I thought, how amazing, I put on lipstick and a short skirt and look what can happen.

Judy shook her head when she saw me the next day, dressed in the same clothes I had worn to work the day before. "We used to call that the walk of shame," she said.

His sister was a lesbian, but that didn't make him decent.

God, if she considered it, seemed awfully cruel and violent, blowing people's houses down, washing out the coastline. Such a God, Allison was sure, would have to be a man, and not a particularly nice one.

My husband's girlfriend worked for an airline, but she was not a flight attendant, like I'd first assumed. She was an actual pilot. I supposed that made it better.

I was tall and biracial and sexy. But then there was Winnie. Her blond hair fell straight like a pane of glass. This was who my Jewish babysitter wanted?

Why was success required of a person? And once you were successful, life required you to do it again and again.