Quote of the Day (Vivian Gornick, on Persisting at Writing)

“It's terrible, not to be able to work every day, but every day, in my long writing life, to come up against the fog in the head. The inability to think, to write another sentence. There are many days when I don't write anything. But I always sit down at the desk. Absolutely. Every morning, religiously.”— American feminist literary critic, journalist, essayist, and memoirist Vivian Gornick quoted by Alexandra Schwartz, “Look Again,” The New Yorker, Feb. 10, 2020

(Photograph of Vivian Gornick taken Oct. 4, 2018, through YouTube by librairie mollat.)

Quote of the Day (Vivian Gornick, on the Healing Power of a Walk Through the City)

“As I saw myself moving ever farther toward the social margin, nothing healed me of a sore and angry heart like a walk through the city. To see in the street the fifty different ways people struggle to remain human—the variety and inventiveness of survival techniques—was to feel the pressure relieved, the overflow draining off. I felt in my nerve endings the common refusal to go under.”—American critic, journalist, essayist, and memoirist Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City: A Memoir (2015)

This week seven years ago, I took the picture accompanying this post while walking through the Clinton Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn—a section of the New York borough filled with tree-lined streets and brownstones. At least for me, it held some of the restorative powers that Ms. Gornick praises.

Quote of the Day (Vivian Gornick, on Humiliation)

“Nothing, nothing, nothing in the world can destroy the soul as much as outright humiliation. Every other infliction can eventually be withstood or overcome, but not humiliation. Humiliation lingers in the mind, the heart, the veins, the arteries forever. It allows people to brood for decades on end, often deforming their inner lives.”—American essayist, journalist, and memoirist Vivian Gornick, “‘Put on the Diamonds’: Notes on Humiliation,” Harper’s, October 2021

(Photograph of Vivian Gornick taken Oct. 4, 2018, through YouTube by librairie mollat.)