Ariel Gore Quotes & Sayings

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

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

In all of my looking at happiness, one thing I noticed right away is that the opposite of happiness isn't unhappiness or even depression, it's anxiety. It is something that can constantly block our happiness, or our chance to reach that sort of meditative state in our work or our home lives. — Ariel Gore

Settling other people's land is an American tradition. — Ariel Gore

Nourish the world with your words, yo. — Ariel Gore

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. — Ariel Gore

New Agers have always told us that we create our own realities. Mind over matter. — Ariel Gore

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. — Ariel Gore

The first person who ever told me that happiness was work was this manic-depressive artist I knew when I was in my 20s. I was like, 'What are you talking about? Happiness just happens. That's even the root of that word. How could it be work?' — Ariel Gore

Looking for the perfect day is not going to make us happy, because that day isn't going to come. — Ariel Gore

Artists and writers have to understand and live the truth that what we are doing is nourishing the world. — Ariel Gore

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. — Ariel Gore

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

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. — Ariel Gore

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

I've been thinking about disowning some of my genes lately. I have a few healthy, happy, long-living optimists in my family tree - most of them fans of Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy, a major champion of positive thinking. But I've got plenty of ancestors who played out more tortured hands. — Ariel Gore

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. — Ariel Gore

In my experience, staying in a marriage that my ex and I both agreed had all its best moments behind it was epically depressing. — Ariel Gore

That kind of thinking [that writers must alleviate their guilt for leading a creative life] is based on the idea that the creative life is somehow self-indulgent. Artists and writers have to understand and live the truth that what we are doing is nourishing the world. William Carlos Williams said, "It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there." You can't eat a book, right, but books have saved my life more often than sandwiches. And they've saved your life ... But we don't say, oh, Maya Angelou should have silenced herself because other people have other destinies. It's interesting, because artists are always encouraged to feel guilty about their work. Why? Why don't we ask predatory bankers how they alleviate their guilt? — Ariel Gore

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. — Ariel Gore

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

Before I published anything, I dreamed of publication, but I didn't actually write for it. I imagined that writing for an audience was something for fancier people. I aspired, but mostly I wrote for myself. I wrote because it made me happy. — Ariel Gore

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. — Ariel Gore

One thing that blocks flow is self-consciousness. — Ariel Gore

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

When you study postpartum depression, there is a very clear understanding that in communities where you see more support, there is less depression. — Ariel Gore

Some caregivers want to reciprocate the care they themselves received as children. — Ariel Gore

My own habit had always been to write about the things that ticked me off in a given day. If I kept a journal at all, I kept it to vent. — Ariel Gore

Conventional wisdom tells us we'll only be happier after a divorce if the marriage itself was a war zone. — Ariel Gore

They say change gets more difficult as we get older - each year we're more stuck in our ways, more reluctant to learn something new. — Ariel Gore

I always do like seeing other people dance in their cars. It's one of the things that makes me happy. — Ariel Gore

No one ever does the last thing on their list. — Ariel Gore

A lot of positive psychology is stuck in being the psychology of privilege, and I reject that. — Ariel Gore

A lot of women make choices based on how they saw their mother's choices working out, how they saw the choices of the women elders in their lives working out. There's some rebellion in that, but there's also some deep reflection. — Ariel Gore

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

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. — 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. — Ariel Gore

The last introvert in a world of extroverts. Silence: my response to both emptiness and saturation. But silence frightens people. I had to learn how to talk. Out of politeness. — Ariel Gore

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. — Ariel Gore