What happened to the writer is not what matters; what matters is the large sense that the writer is able to make of what happened. Vivian Gornick More Quotes by Vivian Gornick More Quotes From Vivian Gornick The desire for narration keeps on reasserting itself, so that since modernism and fiction brought narration to an end, it is sought in memoirs. Vivian Gornick ends desire fiction I once wrote a book on women in science. I realized when I was interviewing them that they were the equivalent of writers, or anyone else who tries to make art out of life. Through science they had reached the expressive. Vivian Gornick trying book art The memoirist, like the poet and the novelist, must engage the world, because engagement makes experience, experience makes wisdom, and finally it's the wisdom-or rather the movement toward it-that counts. Vivian Gornick engagement novelists writing We cannot depend on change, but we can depend on surprise. However, we cannot always depend on surprise either. This keeps us on our toes. Vivian Gornick toes surprise expectations You are the instrument of your own illumination. Vivian Gornick illumination instruments For the integrated human being there is no past: there is only the continual transformation of original experience. Vivian Gornick transformation being-there past When cafe life thrives, talk is a shared limberness of the mind that improves appetite for conversation: an adequate sentence maker is then made good, a good one excellent, an excellent one extraordinary. Vivian Gornick cafes adequate mind When the whole world is writing letters, it's easy to lap into the quiet within, tell the story of an hour, keep alive the narrating inner life. To be alone in the presence of one's thought is not a value, only a common practice. Vivian Gornick thoughtful writing thinking When I work I feel more alive than under any other circumstances. There's not an 'I love you' in the world that can match it. I feel safe, excited, at peace, erotic, centered. Nothing can touch me. Vivian Gornick erotic work love-you No man worth his salt does not wish to be a husband and father; yet no man is raised to be a husband and father and no man would ever conceive of those relationships as instruments of his prime function in life. Yet every woman is raised, still, to believe that the fulfillment of these relationships is her prime function in life and, what's more, her instinctive choice. Vivian Gornick husband believe father Research is the live heart of the scientific life ... Greatness of position, respect for past accomplishments, the Nobel Prize itself -- none of these can compensate for the loss of vitality only research provides. Vivian Gornick loss heart past for me, the beauty of feminism is that it is a social and political movement that has redefined the power and obligation of the self: self-possession and self-regulation as a tool for social reform. Vivian Gornick feminism political self Widowhood provided Mama with a higher form of being. In refusing to recover from my father's death she had discovered that her life was endowed with a seriousness her years in the kitchen had denied her. She remained devoted to this seriousness for thirty years. She never tired of it, never grew bored or restless in its company, found new ways to keep alive the interest it deserved and had so undeniably earned. Vivian Gornick tired father years Women occupy, in great masses, the 'household tasks' of industry. They are nurses but not doctors, secretaries but not executives, researchers but not writers, workers but not managers, bookkeepers but not promoters. Vivian Gornick doctors tasks nurse a scientist or a writer is one who ruminates continuously on the nature of physical or imaginative life, experiences repeated relief and excitement when the insight comes, and is endlessly attracted to working out the idea. Vivian Gornick work-out science ideas Whatever a scientist is doing - reading, cooking, talking, playing - science thoughts are always there at the edge of the mind. They are the way the world is taken in; all that is seen is filtered through an everpresent scientific musing. Vivian Gornick taken reading science To do science today is to experience a dimension unique in contemporary working lives; the work promises something incomparable: the sense of living both personally and historically. That is why science now draws to itself all kinds of people - charlatans, mediocrities, geniuses - everyone who wants to touch the flame, feel alive to the time. Vivian Gornick flames unique science Awareness of the self is more acutely at the heart of things than it has ever been before. On the foundation of self-awareness alone rest all our hopes for a new politics, a new society, a revitalized life. If we do not genuinely know ourselves, the void will now, at last, surely rise up to meet us. Vivian Gornick foundation self heart in New York there's such diversity that there's no one central identity; everyone is marginal. Vivian Gornick diversity identity new-york self-possession is the ability to face without fear life in all its contradictions. Vivian Gornick confidence self faces
