Best 68 quotes of Gina Barreca on MyQuotes

Although fear in the right dosage and under the right circumstance protects us ... imaginary fear offers straitjackets instead of lifejackets, nooses instead of safety nets.

Anger can offer a sense of indignity to replace a sense of shame, and offer a voice-raised above others-which can finally be heard. Those voices are most effective when they are raised in unison, when they have mercy as well as anger behind them, and when, instead of roaring at the anger of old pain, they sing about the glorious possibilities of a future where anger has a smaller house than hope.

Anger is the quintessential individual-signature emotion: I am what makes me mad.

As a kid, you await holidays with a wide-eyed, passionate, almost maniacal enthusiasm. Heavy breathing is involved.

Birthdays are a reward for having shown up 365 days in a row. It's like getting a badge for attendance.

Confessions are like tattoos in that 1) You convince yourself that the immediate pain of going through the process means it won't bother you later on; 2) They are permanent.

Envy is what makes you, when an acquaintance is lustily telling you that she's dating a Greek god of a guy, ask, 'Which one, Hades?'

Fear looks both ways but still refuses to cross; fear looks twice and still doesn't leap. ... Fear usually arrives late, inevitably leaves early, and ends up never going out of town at all. Fear is the phantom hand on the back of the neck and the sound of a door opening downstairs when no one is coming home. ... Fear grows poor because it watches others gain wealth but cannot enter the fray; fear grows sick because it eats away at heath even as it fears its diminishment; fear grows old watching others live in ways that seem to threaten-but in reality only enhance-life.

Having a lean and hungry look was frowned upon in my Italian neighborhood where a girl was considered too skinny if she could make her knees touch.

How about "diamonds are a girl's best friends"? Nope. It should be switched around and pointed out, instead, that your best friends are diamonds.

Humor is a show of both strength and of vulnerability: you are willing to make the first move but you are trusting in the response of your listener.

I am constantly surprised that the simple word 'feminism' raises more eyebrows and initiates more sad-faced head-shaking than any elaborate stream of invective I have ever leveled at either the I.R.S. or the D.M.V.

If anger were mileage, I'd be a very frequent flyer, right up there in First Class.

If you know you can do it - if you can already chart every day in your future - then why bother? Choose to do something you have more trouble imagining. Take a chance.

I have an intimate relationship with books. After all, I take them with me into the bathtub-not an invitation I offer lightly.

Interestingly, anger and lust are also elusive states once they have passed. Trying to recall why you were angry about something when you've calmed down is like trying to remember why you were in love with someone who no longer attracts you: the initial impulse triggering the emotion is impossible to recapture.

I personally translated the word 'vendetta' as Italian for 'What do you mean, "you want to see other women"?

Laughing together is as close as you can get to a hug without touching.

Most cooks would not, for example, prepare an important, elaborate, and difficult dish on the back-burner. Neither should we relegate the cultivation and preparation of happiness for a position where it is both hard to reach and difficult to infuse with new ingredients.

My longing to improve my looks via The Body Shop is being replaced by my longing to improve my looks via Photoshop.

Once we hit forty, women only have about four taste buds left: one for vodka, one for wine, one for cheese, and one for chocolate.

The people I work with are like family. I don't mean this in a nice way.

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who like what they like more than they don't like what they don't like and, in contrast, those who don't like what they don't like more than they like what they like.

...there is a celebrated aphorism insisting that the best way to live is to 'work like you don't need the money, dance like nobody is watching, and love like you've never been hurt.'...After years of hearing and reading these lines I have decided to tell the truth: the original version is wrong. There is a grave error in the wording of this adage. The correct version should go as follows: Love like you don't need the money, Work like nobody is watching, Dance like you've never been hurt. See? Doesn't that make more sense?

The search for truth can be compared to a cat chasing her tail: frantic in her pursuit, her quarry nevetheless eludes her; despite the fact that all the world can see it's right there, it remains just beyond her reach. It cannot be possessed because, paradoxically, it is already part of her.

Think of the funniest story from your life. Chances are, it was something awful at the time.

Truth is like nuclear waste: it needs to be dealt with carefully. Sometimes it needs to be buried way, way out of town. And sometimes it should never be uncovered at all.

We should remind ourselves that laughing together is as close as you can get to another person without touching, and sometimes it represents a closer tie than touching ever could.

While I do not believe the earth loaned to us by our ancestors should be plagued by chemical horrors and thereby corrupted for future generations, neither do I believe I should have to face anything that has more eyes than I have during dinner. It was my rule when I was dating and, heck, it's still my rule now.

After a certain age, you finally become the indisputable authority on the subject of yourself.

As a writer, I roll around in words the way cats roll around in catnip.

Ask a woman if she’s ambitious and she’ll look at you as if you just asked whether she sticks pins in puppies for fun. Ask a woman if she’s competitive and she’ll look at you as if you suggested that she’s a hooker.

A truly thoughtful lover would not attempt to arouse you with the subtlety of a chimp trying to dial a rotary phone.

Boys are rewarded for playing games where they line up by height and then run into walls. Perhaps I'm making that up--or perhaps you should do a Google search for "Guy Runs into Wall for Fun.

Boys are rewarded for playing games where they line up by height and then run into walls. Perhaps I'm making that up--or perhaps you should do a Google search for "Guy Runs into Wall for Fun." Not only do women hold up half the sky; we do it while carrying a 500-pound purse. From age sixteen to age twenty, a woman's body is a temple. From twenty-one to forty-five, it's an amusement park. From forty-five on, it's a terrarium. Bring your sense of humor with you at all times. Bring your friends with a sense of humor. If their friends have a sense of humor, invite them, too

But if you believe that your best years are behind you, you've guaranteed they are; I'm going to dance into that good night, with the oldies turned up loud.

Comics know that time plus pain equals humor and that we can redeem even awful moments from the past by translating them into a shared experience.

Ever notice there are no clocks in stores? It's like casinos; they don't want you to know how much time you've spent dropping your quarters.

Fate gives us relatives for one reason: so that we have to learn how to deal with people we'd otherwise never know.

From age sixteen to age twenty, a woman's body is a temple. From twenty-one to forty-five, it's an amusement park. From forty-five on, it's a terrarium.

Given that the shared understanding of truth has been central to language, religion and society, when we ignore small lies, we inflict damage on the larger truth. This is not holiness we’re talking about, but wholeness and integrity.

Having an unresolved Bad Boyfriend issue is like carrying around credit card debt . . . which can still show up and wreck your rating.

Heaven makes you family, but a new generation of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors can make you friends.

I'd say it's time for women to make a stand. And it's far, far easier to make a stand when you're wearing comfortable shoes.

Increasingly political, assertive, articulate, and outspoken as we age, many of us become, paradoxically, the girls we were once: wild, hearty, courageous, and playful.

In short, immaturity is spoiled. And what is spoiled doesn’t ripen. It goes bad early, gets bitter and withers on the vine.

I see birthdays as a reward for having shown up 365 in a row. It's like getting a badge for attendance.

I've been married for a long time and there are days when I still wonder, 'Excuse me, but who is this man?

I was raised a Roman Catholic, but it was the kind of domesticated Catholicism that focused mostly on the length of your skirt rather than, say, the depth of your penitential observance

I will count my blessings when I am in the doldrums, count to ten when I am quarrelsome, and count on my friends when I need a laugh.