Barbara Grizzuti Harrison Quotes

Quotes about:

Belief Imagination Past Soul Travel Water

There are no original ideas. There are only original people.

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

Ideas, People, Original Ideas

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Our awesome responsibility to ourselves, to our children, and to the future is to create ourselves in the image of goodness, because the future depends on the nobility of our imaginings.

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

Children, Responsibility, Goodness

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (1974). “Unlearning the lie: sexism in school”, William Morrow & Company

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Facts mean nothing to wounded feelings.

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

Mean, Feelings, Facts

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (1989). “Italian Days”, p.353, Atlantic Monthly Press

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Persecution always acts as a jell for members of cults; it proves to them, in the absence of history, liturgy, tradition, and doctrine, that they are God's chosen.

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

Doctrine, Tradition, Absence

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (1992). “The Astonishing World: Essays”, Houghton Mifflin

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All acts performed in the world begin in the imagination.

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

Success, Creativity, Ideas

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Beware of people carrying ideas. Beware of ideas carrying people.

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

Ideas, People

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Food is my drug of choice.

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

Food, Choices, Drug

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (1997). “An Accidental Autobiography”, Mariner Books

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There are places one comes home to that one has never been to.

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

Travel, Home, Coming Home

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (1989). “Italian Days”, p.185, Atlantic Monthly Press

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Porches are America's lost rooms.

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

America, Rooms, Lost

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (1996). “An Accidental Autobiography”, Houghton Mifflin

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Fantasies are more than substitutes for unpleasant reality; they are also dress rehearsals, plans. All acts performed in the world begin in the imagination.

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

Inspirational, Art, Reality

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Every generation reinvents the wheel - and in the process it often adds to rather than subtracts from a woman's burdens.

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

Add, Generations, Wheels

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (1997). “An Accidental Autobiography”, Mariner Books

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truth ... is the first casualty of tyranny.

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

Truth, Firsts, Casualties

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to have a crisis, and act upon it, is one thing. To dwell in perpetual crisis is another.

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

Stress, Trouble, Crisis

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To surrender one's vulnerable body to water has always seemed to me a limpid act of will that has no coutnerpart or equal, unless it is sex.

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

Sports, Sex, Water

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (1997). “An Accidental Autobiography”, Mariner Books

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Kindness and intelligence don't always deliver us from the pitfalls and traps: there are always failures of love, of will, of imagination. There is no way to take the danger out of human relationships.

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

Kindness, Imagination, Pitfalls

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[On Werner Erhard, founder of est:] If I wanted a new belief system, I'd choose to believe in God - He's been in business longer than Werner, and He has better music.

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

Believe, Belief, Music Is

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Rome is all things high and low. It is like God, it accommodates so much.

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

Rome, Lows, All Things

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (1989). “Italian Days”, p.213, Atlantic Monthly Press

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There is something worse than dying, and that is humiliation - at least so it seemed to me.

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

Dying, Embarrassment, Humiliation

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Illness is regarded as a crime, and crime is regarded as illness.

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

Illness, Crime

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (1997). “An Accidental Autobiography”, Mariner Books

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I made the mistake of thinking that if you add up the past, you sum up the future; I forgot how frequently life astonishes us.

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

Mistake, Past, Thinking

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (1980). “Off Center: Essays”

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Grief does not end and love does not die and nothing fills its graven place. With grace, pain is transmuted into the gold of wisdom and compassion and the lesser coin of muted sadness and resignation; but something leaden of it remains, to become the kernel arond which more pain accretes (a black pearl): one pain becomes every other pain ... unless one strips away, one by one, the layers of pain to get to the heart of the pain - and this causes more pain, pain so intense as to feel like evisceration.

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

Pain, Grief, Heart

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the gardens of our childhood are all beautiful.

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

Beautiful, Garden, Childhood

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (2015). “Italian Days”, p.271, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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Insanity is a lack of proportion.

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

Insanity, Proportion

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (1989). “Italian Days”, p.62, Atlantic Monthly Press

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How do you think it would feel to be obliged to ask for a seat-belt extender on an airplane? For the unfashionably bulgy, life is a series of small humiliations.

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

Airplane, Thinking, Weight

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (1997). “An Accidental Autobiography”, Mariner Books

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To offer the complexities of life as an excuse for not addressing oneself to the simpler, more manageable (trivial) aspects of daily existence is a perversity often indulged in by artists, husbands, intellectuals -- and critics of the Women's Movement.

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

Husband, Artist, Movement

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (1974). “Unlearning the lie: sexism in school”, William Morrow & Company

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Born: September 14, 1934
Died: April 24, 2002
Occupation: Journalist
Cite this Page: Citation

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