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I think our material is our lives. That's part of being a modern writer, and we have to use it.

Anne Roiphe

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Anne Roiphe
Age: 88
Born: 1935
Born: December 25
Essayist
Film Writer
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
New York City
New York
Writer
Modern
Lives
Use
Part
Think
Thinking
Material
Materials

More quotes by Anne Roiphe

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When I grew up, you needed to have straight hair. It's symbolic of needing to be like everyone else, needing to look like everyone else. And what that meant was looking like the dominant ruling class in America.
Anne Roiphe
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Sometimes what we call love is just a settling of old scores, or a seeking of forbidden pain, or a circuitous path to the kingdom of cruelty, or she may simply have confused lack of capital with heroism while searching for rescue without knowing from what.
Anne Roiphe
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What other people think of me is not really my major concern in life. What other people think of what I write is another matter.
Anne Roiphe
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They want to play at being mothers. So let them. Expressing tenderness in their own way will not prevent girls from enjoying a successful career in the future indeed, the ability to nurture is as valuable a skill in the workplace as the ability to lead.
Anne Roiphe
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People always tell me either A. you love him. B. you hate him. My usual answer? C. All of the above.
Anne Roiphe
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Everybody is bound by some social rules. But I think that artists need some kind of freedom to explore their minds and that some of them tend to take that freedom to live a little more openly or a little more dangerously, sometimes a lot more self-destructively, than other people.
Anne Roiphe
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Reader, you forget that economics precedes religion worship grew out of eating, not the other way around.
Anne Roiphe
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People always think their world is coming to an end if they're exposed, and of course it isn't coming to an end it goes right on exactly the way it always was.
Anne Roiphe
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I am not a perfect friend, and it is impossible not to rebuff or be rebuffed if you move about the world.
Anne Roiphe
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I don't really think it comes as a shock to every writer if somebody in their family is mad at them. Yes, it's very upsetting. But it's inherent in the process of trying to make sense of one's life, which is what I think is perhaps at the bottom of writing at all.
Anne Roiphe
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It is hard to hold on to friendships when people move away to another state or to another world.
Anne Roiphe
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I really consider myself a writer, and a writer who is sometimes a social critic. I'm not an ideologue, I don't join a party. I follow along and take notes. Sometimes I throw in my two cents.
Anne Roiphe
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Self-pity is never useful. It tends to distort like a fun-house mirror.
Anne Roiphe
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I have always been fascinated by the human mind, conscious and unconscious - that is what writing and reading is about, too. The why of your life and the why of your choices and the what has happened that you know and the what that you don't know is really riveting, and psychoanalysts share my wonder at how it all unfolds.
Anne Roiphe
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How deep is our desire to do better than our mothers--to bring daughters into adulthood strong and fierce yet loving and gentle, adventurous and competitive but still nurturing and friendly, sweet yet sharp. We know as working women that we can't quite have it all, but that hasn't stopped us from wanting it all for them.
Anne Roiphe
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I would prefer you not to say, That was the most terribly written piece I've ever read. That would hurt me. But you don't think I'm the best person in the world? Well, alright.
Anne Roiphe
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Romanticizing the act of writing or any other art is not very helpful to the artist or the art. It's much better if one simply does.
Anne Roiphe
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Decay is quiet but ghastly, explosion is dramatic and dreadful. There's not much to choose between the two of them in reality, and most of our lives have sufficient of both.
Anne Roiphe
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Is it possible that my sons-in-law will do toilets? If we raise boys to know that diapers need to be changed and refrigerators need to be cleaned, there's hope for the next generation.
Anne Roiphe
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I think it is a good thing to have woman friends at every stage of life. We confide in each other, we support each other, we understand each other most of the time. Of course, sometimes we are competitive or angry or distant, too. But I do think it is important not to let the main friendships slip away in the sweep of the days.
Anne Roiphe