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The sadness from reading letters that you know you can't help because it's a person who's in extremis and their problems are not soluble by an advice column.

Emily Yoffe

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Emily Yoffe
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: October 15
Columnist
Journalist
Problem
Columns
Persons
Sadness
Person
Letters
Advice
Problems
Reading
Extremis
Help
Soluble
Helping
Column

More quotes by Emily Yoffe

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Love is not shown by giving your toddler a car. It's better demonstrated by clapping as she bangs on pots or singing to her while she plays with her cheap little bath toys in the tub.
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I am against lying, but just because someone asks a question does not mean you have to answer it.
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There are some people who do not have a wild past because being wild would make them terribly self-conscious and uncomfortable.
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People often recommend, Why do you ask? as a good conversation stopper. But that really doesn't end the conversation, it just leaves the other person sputtering for a response. I like, You'll be the first to know..
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I have this wonderful capacity just to walk away from my mistakes and not dwell on them.
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The biggest problem is that people want to tell the whole story, and they write letters that are way longer than anything I could possibly run.
Emily Yoffe
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The only solution seems to be for government to toughen the vaccination laws and close the loopholes that allow people to opt out for philosophical and so-called religious reasons. The laws need to make clear: no shot, no school.
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Don't underestimate the power of the nonplussed look and the shake of the head. Letting noxious words hang in the air can be very powerful.
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If you didn't want to be written about, you shouldn't have been born to a writer!
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Each week I am forced to revise my original opinion that Facebook is a great innovation for keeping people in touch, to believing that it is merely a canvas for members to act out strange, unresolved conflicts and desires.
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Unless you work at the Republican National Committee or some other conservatively affiliated organization, people's personal political preferences should not be a criterion for employment or comfort in the workplace.
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I know this is awkward, but when you laugh after almost everything you say, it ends up undermining you.
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I marvel with distress that in 2015 we are fighting the vaccination wars. It is deeply disturbing that people who should be able to weigh discredited so-called studies instead believe garbage, and so are willing to endanger their children and others. I sincerely hope this madness burns itself out before a lot more people get hurt.
Emily Yoffe
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My inbox [showed me] how much pain there is in the world. I appreciated hearing from people, but it was hard to know I couldn't do anything.
Emily Yoffe
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Obama's major accomplishment is himself. This can be an effective argument to make to undecided voters and something Obama has to artfully address.
Emily Yoffe
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I'm not suffering from some division of personality.
Emily Yoffe
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Sometimes people have a wild past because they have an essentially wild nature, and that's how they plan to go through life. Sometimes such people settle into happy monogamy, and can be content there because they never have to wonder, What did I miss?
Emily Yoffe
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It is a mystery why people think they need to act as their friends' dietitian, nonetheless it's common.
Emily Yoffe
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If you think a caregiver has an active substance abuse problem, that person should never be entrusted with your child.
Emily Yoffe
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When my daughter left for college, I lost my in-house consultant to youth culture. There's just stuff I don't get. And there's something kind of pathetic about someone my age trying to pretend she gets it, so I don't try to pretend.
Emily Yoffe