Meg Wolitzer Quotes

24 Sourced Quotes

The generation that had information, but no context. Butter, but no bread. Craving, but no longing.

Meg Wolitzer
And I also know that pain can seem like an endless ribbon. You pull it and you pull it. You keep gathering it toward you, and as it collects, you really can't believe that there's something else at the end of it. Something that isn't just more pain. But there's always something else at the end; something at least a little different. You never know what that thing will be, but it's there.

Meg Wolitzer
We are all here, on this earth for only one go around. And everyone thinks their purpose is to just find their passion. But perhaps our purpose is to find what other people need.

Meg Wolitzer
Wasn't the whole point of being an artist, or at least part of it, that you didn't have to wear a tie?

Meg Wolitzer
But it's never just been the journals that have made the difference, I don't think. It's also the way the students are with one another... the way they talk about books and authors and themselves. Not just their problems, but their passions too. The way they form a little society and discuss whatever matters to them. Books light the fire-whether it's a book that's already written, or an empty journal that needs to be filled in.

Meg Wolitzer
It seemed that everywhere you went, people quickly adapted to the way they had to live, and called it Life.

Meg Wolitzer
Just the act of sleeping beside someone you liked to be with. Maybe that was love.

Meg Wolitzer
Part of the beauty of love was that you didn't need to explain it to anyone else. You could refuse to explain. With love, apparently you didn't necessarily feel the need to explain anything at all.

Meg Wolitzer
Being a teacher at a restaurant in the town where you lived was a little like being a TV star...

Meg Wolitzer
New teachers were just a part of life, for a few days after one arrived, squawks of interest were emitted from various corners, but then they died away as the teacher was absorbed like everyone else...before you knew it, the fresh ones seemed to have been teaching there forever too, or else they didn't last very long, and were gone before you'd gotten to know them.

Meg Wolitzer
The only option for a creative person was constant motion—a lifetime of busy whirligigging in a generally forward direction, until you couldn't do it any longer.

Meg Wolitzer
You had only one chance for a signature in life, but most people left no impression.

Meg Wolitzer
Twitter," said Manny, waving his hand. "You know what that is? Termites with microphones.

Meg Wolitzer
You stayed around your children as long as you could, inhaling the ambient gold shavings of their childhood, and at the last minute you tried to see them off into life and hoped that the little piece of time you'd given them was enough to prevent them from one day feeling lonely and afraid and hopeless. You wouldn't know the outcome for a long time.

Meg Wolitzer
Even if you yourself were unhappy and anxious, whenever you glimpsed happiness in your child, you suddenly became happy too.

Meg Wolitzer
And specialness - everyone wants it. But Jesus, is it the most essential thing there is? Most people aren't talented. So what are they supposed to do - kill themselves?

Meg Wolitzer
But, she knew, you didn't have to marry your soulmate, and you didn't even have to marry an Interesting. You didn't always need to be the dazzler, the firecracker, the one who cracked everyone up, or made everyone want to sleep with you, or be the one who wrote and starred in the play that got the standing ovation. You could cease to be obsessed with the idea of being interesting.

Meg Wolitzer
I always thought it was the saddest and most devastating ending. How you could have these enormous dreams that never get met. How without knowing it you could just make yourself smaller over time. I don't want that to happen to me.

Meg Wolitzer
But clearly life took people and shook them around until finally they were unrecognizable even to those who had once known them well. Still, there was power in once having known someone.

Meg Wolitzer
People like to warn you that by the time you reach the middle of your life, passion will begin to feel like a meal eaten long ago, which you remember with great tenderness.

Meg Wolitzer
After a certain age, you felt a need not to be alone. It grew stronger, like a radio frequency, until finally it was so powerful that you were forced to do something about it.

Meg Wolitzer
The child who was happy with herself meant the parents had won the jackpot.

Meg Wolitzer
But this post-college world felt different from everything that had come before it; art was still central, but now everyone had to think about making a living too, and they did so with a kind of scorn for money except as it allowed them to live the way they wanted to live.

Meg Wolitzer
But it had no doubt sprung from true emotion, for all that parents ever wanted, really, was for you to love their child the way they did.

Meg Wolitzer