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

Categorized in : Ideas Class Writing

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?

artist talking happiness

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

support community understanding

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.

work-out reflection mother

In our cultural history, all emotions have been more culturally a... by Ariel Gore

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

acceptable has-beens emotion

Looking for the perfect day is not going to make us happy, becaus... by Ariel Gore

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

perfect-days perfect

A lot of positive psychology is stuck in being the psychology of... by Ariel Gore

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

stuck psychology privilege

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.

irritated new-friends new-relationship

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.

made writing people

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.

given habit writing

New Agers have always told us that we create our own realities. M... by Ariel Gore

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

matter mind reality

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.

depth happiness thinking

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.

block home happiness

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

conventional-wisdom divorce war

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

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

fighting fists heart

Some caregivers want to reciprocate the care they themselves rece... by Ariel Gore

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

care want children

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.

silence people world

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.

burritos writing sex

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.

three heart blood

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

Settling other people's land is an American tradition.

tradition land people

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

Nourish the world with your words, yo.

world