Guess quote

Gail Sheehy [1937-0] American

Rank: 101
Writer, Author

Gail Sheehy is an American author, journalist, and lecturer. She is the author of seventeen books, including Passages, named one of the ten most influential books of our times by the Library of Congress.

Chance, Failure, Change, Courage, Good, Humor, Learning, Women

Quote	Tags	Rank
Creativity can be described as letting go of certainties.		101
Would that there were an award for people who come to understand the concept of enough. Good enough. Successful enough. Thin enough. Rich enough. Socially responsible enough. When you have self-respect, you have enough.	Good	102
If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we aren't really living.	Change	103
Growth demands a temporary surrender of security.		104
The delights of self-discovery are always available.	Learning	105
People in grief need someone to walk with them without judging them.		106
If every day is an awakening, you will never grow old. You will just keep growing.		107
Spontaneity, the hallmark of childhood, is well worth cultivating to counteract the rigidity that may otherwise set in as we grow older.		108
There is no more defiant denial of one man's ability to possess one woman exclusively than the prostitute who refuses to redeemed.		109
No sooner do we think we have assembled a comfortable life than we find a piece of ourselves that has no place to fit in.		110
Stress overload makes us stupid. Solid research proves it. When we get overstressed, it creates a nasty chemical soup in our brains that makes it hard to pull out of the anxious depressive spiral.		111
Ah, mastery... what a profoundly satisfying feeling when one finally gets on top of a new set of skills... and then sees the light under the new door those skills can open, even as another door is closing.		112
To be tested is good. The challenged life may be the best therapist.		113
It is a paradox that as we reach out prime, we also see there is a place where it finishes.		114
Being a pathfinder is to be willing to risk failure and still go on.	Failure	115
When men reach their sixties and retire, they go to pieces. Women go right on cooking.	Women	116
We see it in the body, that if you just give the body enough rest and comfort, it has remarkable self-healing capacities. Well, so does the spirit.		117
I keep returning to the central question facing over-50 women as we move into our Second Adulthood. What are our goals for this stage in our lives?		118
We have to move from the unbridled pursuit of self-gain at the expense of others to recovering appreciation for what we gain by caring and sharing with one another.		119
In rough times, pathfinders rely on work, friends, humor and prayer. They develop a support network.	Humor	120
I found that female pathfinders generally integrate characteristics commonly associated with being women - like the capacity to be intimate - with 'male' ones like ambition and courage.	Courage	121
This is something caregivers have to understand: You have to ask for help. You have to realize that you deserve to ask for help. Because you need to keep on working on your own life.		122
Most women have learned a great deal about how to set goals for our First Adulthood and how to roll with the punches when we hit a rough passage. But we're less prepared for our Second Adulthood as we approach life after retirement, where there are no fixed entrances or exits, and lots of sand into which it is easy to bury our heads.		123
We really only have two choices. Play it safe, or take a chance. For me, pulling back because of fear has always made me feel worse.	Chance	124
All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter into another!		125
If you're the person living closest to the parent who's going to need help, and you take on the whole role of primary caregiver, you can be pretty sure your sibling who lives farthest away is going to call you and say, 'You don't know what you're doing.' Because they're not on the spot, and they probably feel guilty.		126
You have a new role: family caregiver. It's a role nobody applies for. You don't expect it. You won't be prepared. You probably won't even identify yourself as a caregiver.		201
I dare to do things - that's how I survive.		202
Changes are not only possible and predictable, but to deny them is to be an accomplice to one's own unnecessary vegetation.		203
The secret of a leader lies in the tests he has faced over the whole course of his life and the habit of action he develops in meeting those tests.		204
The perceptions of middle age have their own luminosity.		205
In my memoir, I admit that I've been as fearful of success as of failure. In fact, when 'Passages' was published, I so dreaded bad reviews that I ran away to Italy with a girlfriend and our children to hide out.	Failure	206
I was devastated when I got the review for my first book. The book came out a couple years before the women's movement broke through, and people were putting it down, asking, 'Why does the woman in this book need to get a divorce? Why can't she just shut up and be happy?'		207
No one can control the aging process or the trajectory of illness.		208
In the case of my husband, we found that facing a life-threatening illness prodded us to make a dramatic change in our lives.		209
Adapting to our Second Adulthood is not all about the money. It requires thinking about how to find a new locus of identity or how to adjust to a spouse who stops working and who may loll, enjoying coffee and reading the paper online while you're still commuting.		210
The dream for many millennial women is to make a difference as social or political entrepreneurs. They are using the social media and marketing tools they have mastered to empower less fortunate women and direct them onto career tracks that women have traditionally avoided, like science and technology.		211
Career-driven millennials are strategic about working obsessively while they are single and earning enough money to afford advanced education. Most are patient enough to wait until 30 or later to develop their dream.		212
Family caregiving has become a predictable crisis. Americans are living longer and longer but dying slower and slower.		213
In the first phase of shock over, say, your mortgage being called in or your job washed out, it's essential to engage with others and share the fear, release the feelings, do fun things to take your mind off it.		214
I actually like getting out of my comfort zone. It shakes me up.		215
You don't have to feel confident to act confident. In fact, it's the most important acting job you can learn.		216
My husband, Clay Felker, died 17 years after his first cancer due to secondary conditions that developed from treatment.		217
Be willing to shed parts of your previous life. For example, in our 20s, we wear a mask; we pretend we know more than we do. We must be willing, as we get older, to shed cocktail party phoniness and admit, 'I am who I am.'		218
Over the next few years the boardrooms of America are going to light up with hot flashes.		219
Sex and older women used to be considered an oxymoron, rarely mentioned in the same breath.		220
I do think taking the 20s to take the most chances you can is important, because you're not going to hurt anyone else during that time. And if you do have a partner, you need a couple years to rehearse that relationship.	Chance	221
I found the happiest woman in America is between 50 and 55, is happily married, has made significant progress in her career, and lives in a community where she can easily exercise outside. But the most important single thing was she had her last child before she was 35.		222
Eventually, all mentor-disciple relationships are meant to pull apart, usually sometime in the mid-30s. Those who hang on, eventually the mentor drops the disciple, and that's no fun.		223
It seems like, to me, somewhere between 30 and 35 is a really, really good time to turn your eggs into babies.		224
Character is what was yesterday and will be tomorrow.		225
It was so naive to think that there was nothing interesting that happened after 55. Come on, there's a whole second adulthood!		226
I actually interviewed other people about myself, and that alerted me to the fact that I had to really investigate my memories.		301
When I was immobilized by fear, I might have a panic attack. I've had a couple of panic attacks in my life.		302
I'd visually have that idea. I'm diving off the end of the diving board. I'm not going to be worried about if I'm going to dive into a jellyfish or the water's going to be too cold or the boys are going to beat me. I'm just doing it. And if I do it, it's a good chance I'll make it.		303
I know I'm never going to probably see the Taj Mahal or, you know, climb Mt. Everest, but I can still maybe influence peoples' way of thinking by a story that I do, by something I learn about the world.		304
I'm a liberal, but I think there's so much that the private sector can do and does do.		305
Like everyone else in the first weeks after the tragedy of 9/11, I was looking frantically for some way to help.		306
It was my very good fortune to find a mentor, Clay Felker, who started my career at the 'New York Magazine' as a freelance writer when I had to quit my job at the 'Herald Tribune' to stay home with my young daughter.		307
I do think women can have it all - but not all women. If you take daring steps and are smart about it, you can probably have it all. But you might have to wait a while.		308
I did not give my daughter the kind of childhood anybody would want. The vision of the divided loyalty between a mother and father who don't live together and don't share in decisions is a great depravation for children.		309
I've had the experience of having a book praised but then it doesn't sell. Or not praised but then it sells.		310
The first thing one notices about Jill Abramson is her short stature. The second is her intensity.		311
The feminist spirit still lives! It shows most boldly among younger women from the millennial generation.		312
Very few women manage to have it all; certainly not all at once.		313
In 2009, I served as AARP's Ambassador of Caregiving. With a producer and cameraman, I traveled the country for months, interviewing hundreds of caregivers.		314
If you begin to think you are solely responsible for keeping your loved one alive and safe, you will eventually find yourself playing God. This phase can develop into an unhealthy, codependent relationship.		315
Married at 23, a mother at 24, and blindsided by divorce at 28, I found myself struggling, like many young women I meet today, to strike a balance between my personal life and my career.		316
One of the ways we women often handicap ourselves is thinking that once we've made a decision or a commitment, we can't change.		317
Jill Clayburgh's life so closely paralleled mine, I feel as though a part of me lived a little through her and died a little with her.		318
Back in 1968, when I was 30, my entire life blew up. I had a life plan, and it collapsed for no rational reason.		319

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