Doris Grumbach Quotes & Sayings

We were determined by public opinions of us. Would we think we existed without outside confirmation? And how long would we live apart from others before we began to doubt our existence? — Doris Grumbach

My old friend, water, my good companion, my beloved mother and father: I am its most natural offspring. — Doris Grumbach

Searching for the self when I was entirely alone was hazardous. What if I found not so much a great emptiness as a space full of unpleasant contents, a compound of long-hidden truths, closeted, buried, forgotten. When I went looking, I was playing a desperate game of hide-and-seek, fearful of what I might find, most afraid that I would find nothing. — Doris Grumbach

Having a book is somewhat like having a baby, as many woman writers have observed before me: the conception, the long preparation, the wait, the growing heaviness (not of body in this case but of the spirit and the manuscript) toward the end, the initial delight at the sight of the product, fully formed and seemingly perfect, and then the usual postpartum depression. What will people whose opinion I care about, and those whose views I don't value but have weight in the world of reader, think of it? — Doris Grumbach

One keeps one's friends better when one is alone. The corollary to this is that one loses one's friends, slowly, when one sees them too often or when they visit for too long a time. — Doris Grumbach

Praise requires constant renewal and expansion. — Doris Grumbach

What others regard as retreat from them or rejection of them is not those things at all but instead a breeding ground for greater friendship, a culture for deeper involvement, eventually, with them. — Doris Grumbach

The reason that extended solitude seemed so hard to endure was not that we missed others but that we began to wonder if we ourselves were present, because for so long our existence depended upon assurances from them. — Doris Grumbach

My eyes glaze over at a writer solving tiny problems. — Doris Grumbach

Talk uses up ideas. Once I have spoken them aloud, they are lost to me, dissipated into the noisy air like smoke. Only if I bury them, like bulbs, in the rich soil of silence do they grow. — Doris Grumbach

Old age is somewhat like dieting. Every day there is less of us to be observed. — Doris Grumbach

A hand up is worthier than one's own fist grasping a higher rung of the ladder. — Doris Grumbach

Writers are entirely egocentric. To them, few things in their lives have meaning or importance unless they give promise of serving some creative purpose. — Doris Grumbach

These short stories establish Sontag's originality ... her unique vision, her success with experiments in the form ... Sontag makes a wonderful stew of the past, the life caught in memory and imagination, serves it all up lavishly laced with silences, and provides us with a gourmand's series of short courses. — Doris Grumbach