Doris Grumbach Quotes

• 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

  Air, Ideas, Silence

  Doris Grumbach (2014). “Fifty Days of Solitude: A Memoir”, p.49, Open Road Media

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

  Doris Grumbach

  Age, Dieting, Old Age

  Doris Grumbach (2014). “Fifty Days of Solitude: A Memoir”, p.9, Open Road Media

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

  Doris Grumbach

  Mother, Father, Water

  Doris Grumbach (2014). “Coming into the End Zone: A Memoir”, p.46, Open Road Media

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• 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

  Loneliness, Long, Solitude

  Doris Grumbach (2014). “Fifty Days of Solitude: A Memoir”, p.11, Open Road Media

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• 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

  Self, Games, Space

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

  Doris Grumbach

  Hands, Ladders, Fists

  Doris Grumbach (2014). “Coming into the End Zone: A Memoir”, p.8, Open Road Media

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• 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

  Rejection, Solitude, Retreat

  Doris Grumbach (2014). “Fifty Days of Solitude: A Memoir”, p.56, Open Road Media

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• 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

  Memories, Unique, Past

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• My eyes glaze over at a writer solving tiny problems.

  Doris Grumbach

  Eye, Crafts, Tiny

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• Praise requires constant renewal and expansion.

  Doris Grumbach

  Expansion, Praise, Renewal

  Doris Grumbach (2014). “Coming into the End Zone: A Memoir”, p.22, Open Road Media

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• 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

  Giving, Creative, Promise

  Doris Grumbach (2014). “Fifty Days of Solitude: A Memoir”, p.39, Open Road Media

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• 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

  Friends, Long, Loses

  Doris Grumbach (2014). “Fifty Days of Solitude: A Memoir”, p.45, Open Road Media

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• 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

  Thinking, Long, Doubt

  Doris Grumbach (2014). “Fifty Days of Solitude: A Memoir”, p.12, Open Road Media

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• 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

  Depression, Baby, Book

  Doris Grumbach (2014). “Extra Innings: A Memoir”, p.7, Open Road Media

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