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Because trying to see all sides, such an instinct is particularly Jewish.

Elizabeth Wurtzel

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Elizabeth Wurtzel
Age: 52 †
Born: 1967
Born: July 31
Died: 2020
Died: January 7
Autobiographer
Journalist
Lawyer
Writer
New York City
New York
Elizabeth Lee Wurtzel
Instinct
Sides
Trying
Jewish
Particularly

More quotes by Elizabeth Wurtzel

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There is a classic moment in ‘The Sun Also Rises’ when someone asks Mike Campbell how he went bankrupt, and all he can say in response is, “Gradually and then suddenly.” When someone asks how I lost my mind, that’s all I can say too.
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Israel fights back, which is very much at odds with the Jewish instinct to discuss and deconstruct everything until action itself seems senseless.
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Judaism will be enmeshed in pride and shame for as long as it endures. But to endure as a country, Israel must shun both these tendencies.
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I start to feel like I can't maintain the facade any longer, that I may just start to show through. And I wish I knew what was wrong. Maybe something about how stupid my whole life is.
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Why does the rest of the world put up with the hypocrisy, the need to put a happy face on sorrow, the need to keep on keeping on?... I don't know the answer, I know only that I can't.
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I thought depression was the part of my character that made me worthwhile. I thought so little of myself, felt that I had such scant offerings to give to the world, that the one thing that justified my existence at all was my agony.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
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So many more cycles of elation of the first kiss, and devastation when it's over.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
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I sit there in my bed staring at the wall, feeling happy, enjoying the way the wall looks, how pink and how white it is. Pink and white, as far as I’m concerned, have never looked quite so pink and white before.
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That is all I want in life: for this pain to seem purposeful.
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Am I worried people will say I'm repeating myself? Sure. One thought I had was to publish it as a novel but eventually I just decided to do what I wanted to do.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
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I am fortunate to have been well paid for an almost pathological honesty.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
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And she keeps saying, how can you do this to me? And i want to scream, what do you mean, how can I do this to you? Aren't we confusing our pronouns here? The question, really, is How could I do this to myself?
Elizabeth Wurtzel
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Sometimes it feels like we're all living in a Prozac nation. The United States of Depression.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
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The most likely person to kill you is your wife, but that probably won't happen. What probably will happen is a million little betrayals of varying degrees of pain, brought on by people you love, the only ones who really can hurt you.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
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And I want out of this life on drugs.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
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I come from a family of screamers. If they are trying to express any emotion or idea beyond pass the salt, it comes in shrieks.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
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It's nonverbal: I need love. I need the thing that happens when your brain shuts off and your heart turns on. And I know it's around me somewhere, but I just can't feel it.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
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You don't even have to hate to have a perfectly miserable time.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
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I start to get the feeling that something is really wrong. Like all the drugs put together – the lithium, the Prozac, the desipramine, and Desyrel that I take to sleep at night – can no longer combat whatever it is that was wrong with me in the first place. I feel like a defective model.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
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...if you feel everything intensely, ultimately you feel nothing at all.
Elizabeth Wurtzel