Home > Author > Gina Barreca
41 " Boys are rewarded for playing games where they line up by height and then run into walls. Perhaps I'm making that up--or perhaps you should do a Google search for "Guy Runs into Wall for Fun. "
― Gina Barreca , "If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse?": Questions and Thoughts for Loud, Smart Women in Turbulent Times
42 " I see birthdays as a reward for having shown up 365 in a row. It's like getting a badge for attendance. "
43 " If you ask a server for a seriously old wine in my neighborhood, they’ll look at you funny and then bring you a half-finished glass from somebody else’s table. "
― Gina Barreca
44 " Ever notice there are no clocks in stores? It's like casinos; they don't want you to know how much time you've spent dropping your quarters. "
45 " Of course, motivating yourself has little to do with energy — and everything to do with decisions.Choosing to do something, especially if it seems difficult, might be hard. You need to decide whether the task is worth the effort. "
46 " We don't want to settle down anymore; we've been settled, like some western township, and now we want to kick up the dust and tear down the fences. Not only won't we settle down; we also won't settle for less than what we've always wanted: a good time and a fair fight. "
47 " Since little-girlhood, we're trained to find the Big Bad Wolf seductive. "
48 " There’s a price to be paid when you raise your daughter to be nice, and she’s not the only one who’s going to pay it. You’ll be right there beside her, trapped by inconvenience, inflexibility and double standards. "
49 " When someone genuinely laughs with you, it’s proof that you share a certain internal space. And that’s not so lonely after all. "
50 " There was something wrong; nobody else had to tell me. Writing it down made me see it. I’d told myself, as if writing to another person. "
51 " Not only do women hold up half the sky; we do it while carrying a 500-pound purse. "
52 " I will count my blessings when I am in the doldrums, count to ten when I am quarrelsome, and count on my friends when I need a laugh. "
53 " When I was in my early 30s and appeared on CNN, Oprah, 20/20 and Entertainment Tonight, my loved ones didn’t say, “Good job!” My loved ones said, “The camera adds more than 20 pounds.” One detail-oriented aunt said “Not for nothing, but don’t wear red. You look like an ad for Red Lobster. "
54 " Here’s to looking every new mother in the eye, not just smiling at the baby, and asking her “How are YOU?”Here’s to listening for her answer. "
55 " I’m fine but, wow, thanks for asking! Very few people ask how Mom is doing; we usually get asked how baby is doing, and that’s that.”My simple “How are YOU?” was met with a complicated response when I asked my niece Anne what her life was like now that she had become a mom. This surprised me not at all. "
56 " Our beliefs define us. And who wants to be undefined in today’s world? So we scrape together convenient truths and build our identities out of them. "
57 " My therapist has helped me learn to understand that if you don't unpack your own emotional baggage it's no longer baggage--it's deadweight. "
58 " Having an unresolved Bad Boyfriend issue is like carrying around credit card debt . . . which can still show up and wreck your rating. "
59 " Civil conversations about personal perspective will be welcome in the bunker, if only because we’ll be cognizant of the fact that incivility didn’t work out too well, given the whole apocalypse thing. "
60 " Every potato chip I've have ever eaten has added another chip to my shoulder. They’re a lot heavier to carry around than the pounds, somehow. "