Nancy Friday Quotes

The older I get the more of my mother I see in myself. ~ Nancy Friday

I'm sure it's why I'm such an odd duck in my feminist generation, because I've always been equally fair to men. ~ Nancy Friday

A woman cannot give a man his sense of maleness. He can desire her, but not identify with her. At best, she can give him a negative identification: I am the opposite of her. This can be very thrilling, but still leaves him deprived of an object of positive identification. (..) other men are brought in to fill the void. They provide contact with an element the inventor, consciously or not, knows he needs to assert himself as fully male. (..) By joining in their sexual games, the woman grants absolution and permission. It isn't so much that these men use women to get to other men as that they need the woman to help break through the guilt barrier that blocks them from their feelings about other men. ~ Nancy Friday

I like the company of men. I've never been welcome in those groups, but then I would no more go to a consciousness-raising group and talk about my intimate life with my husband than fly to the moon. I never understood all that. ~ Nancy Friday

It is not that fathers are better or worse, not that they are more loved or criticized, but rather that they are viewed with far less intensity. There is no Philip Roth or Woody Allen or Nancy Friday who writes about fathers with a runaway excess of humor, horror ... feeling. Most of us let our fathers off the hook. ~ Ellen Goodman

All my writing has been an effort to sort out the paradoxes of my life. ~ Nancy Friday

Do women dress for men or women? I've always wondered why that eternally provocative question is put in terms of approval - as if the heart of the matter, the answer, were indeed a question of approval by either sex. But the question is never satisfactorily answered because it is incorrectly posed. It's disapproval, the fear of it, that motivates most women, and with disapproval it doesn't matter where it comes from. ~ Nancy Friday

Separation is not the end of love; it creates love. ~ Nancy Friday

When is enough enough? In envy's eyes, enough never is. Somebody else always has something we want. ~ Nancy Friday

Who said "ladies" don't use words like "fuck" and "cunt," or that one doesn't use them around "ladies"? Maybe not when you're having lunch with a lady, but when a lady's fucking, she's not having lunch. ~ Nancy Friday

If women really want equality, we have to wipe the slate clean. It no longer matters in the largest sense what men did to us for the last 200 or 300 years. ~ Nancy Friday

When I stopped seeing my mother through the eyes of a child, I saw the woman who helped me give birth to myself. ~ Nancy Friday

No man can be really free in bed with a woman who is not. ~ Nancy Friday

Because society would rather we always wore a pretty face, women have been trained to cut off anger. ~ Nancy Friday

After sex, men fear too much intimacy; they want to separate again. Women want to talk, to continue the merging, melting fusion into one. Postcoital conversations keep the woman's power alive. Through unconscious severance, by falling asleep, the man regains his self. ~ Nancy Friday

To say something nice about yourself, this is the hardest thing in the world for people to do. They'd rather take their clothes off. ~ Nancy Friday

To say something nice about themselves, this is the hardest thing in the world for people to do. ~ Nancy Friday

Women's behavior in handling beauty, even before feminism, was to deny they had any. Don't hate me because I'm beautiful. ~ Nancy Friday

Fantasy isn't something you run out of. ~ Nancy Friday

The debt of gratitude we owe our mother and father goes forward, not backward. What we owe our parents is the bill presented to us by our children. ~ Nancy Friday

Dreams are the expression of the unconscious while we are asleep. ~ Nancy Friday

Inside every adult male is a denied little boy. ~ Nancy Friday

It's Friday; you ain't got no job ... you ain't got shit to do ~ Nancy Friday

Of the Poet's Youth"

When the man behind the counter said, "You pay
by the orifice," what could we do but purchase them all?

Ah, Sandy, vou were clearly the deluxe doll, modish and pert
in your plastic nurse whites, official hostess to our halcyon days,

where you bobbed in the doorway of our dishabille apartment,
a block downwind from the stockyards. Holding court on

the corroded balcony, K. and I passed hash brownies, collecting
change for the building's monthly pool to predict which balcony

would fall off next. That's when K. was fucking M. and M. was
fucking J., and even B. and I threw down once on the glass-speckled

lawn, adrift in the headlights of his El Camino. Those were immortal
times, Sandy! Coke wasn't addictive yet, condoms prevented herpes

and men were only a form of practice for the Russian novel
we foolishly hoped our lives would become. Now it's a Friday night,

sixteen years from there. Don't the best characters know better
than to live too long? My estranged husband house-sits for a spoiled
cockatoo while saving to buy his own place. My lover's gone back
to his gin and the farm-team fiancée he keeps in New York.

What else to do but read Frank O'Hara to my tired three-year-old?
When I put him to bed, he mutters "more sorry" as he turns into sleep.

Tonight, I find you in a box I once marked ~ Erin Belieu

Until we are free to think for ourselves, our dreams are not free to unfold. ~ Nancy Kline

Saddam Hussein certainly has chemical and biological weapons. There's no question about that. ~ Nancy Pelosi

Matt discovered that no matter how terrified he'd been at first, it wasn't possible to stay terrified. It was as though his brain said, Okay. That's enough. Let's find something else to do. ~ Nancy Farmer

The national hysteria over hippies and punks alike fell right in line with Puritan minister Ezekiel Rogers' admonition of 1657: "I find great Trouble and Grief about the Rising Generation. Young People are stirred here [in the colonies]; but they strengthen one another in Evil, by Example, by Counsel. ~ Nancy Jo Sales

The season of Lent is puzzling to many. Denying ourselves our favorite treats or habits - even for a short time - seems archaic in our I-want-it-now culture. Lent is a plodding, definitive crescendo that leads up to the cacophonous noise of Good Friday and the gorgeous aria of Easter. It's a season marked by deliberateness and intentionality. ~ Anonymous

Socialism, as the Mont Pelerin Society members defined the term, was synonymous with any effort by citizens to get their government to act in ways that either cost money to support anything other than police and military functions or encroached on private property rights. ~ Nancy MacLean

In love' is for the romantic. 'Love' for the realist. ~ Nancy Spain

But I know that I am not who I was supposed to be, who I could have been, and I know it's because I was too afraid for too long. It made me think about things I never should have. ~ Nancy Werlin

I love zoo sanctuaries. ~ Nancy Travis

Matt had to swallow hard to keep tears from forming. Fidelito had called him brother! ~ Nancy Farmer

[After her election to the British Parliament and being welcomed to 'the most exclusive men's club in Europe':] It won't be exclusive long. When I came in, I left the door wide open! ~ Nancy Astor

Somehow Geryon made it to adolescence. Then he met Herakles and the kingdoms of his life all shifted down a few notches. ... Geryon was going into the Bus Depot one Friday night about three a.m. to get change to call home. Herakles stepped oof the bus from New Mexico and Geryon came fast around the corner of the platform and there it was one of those moments that is the opposite of blindness. The world poured back and forth between their eyes once or twice. ~ Anne Carson

She posted a picture of herself in a T-shirt which said "FLAWLESS. ~ Nancy Jo Sales

They were tales of commonplace courage and optimism, for I knew from my own experience that everyday virtues endure best, and that quiet courage is worth more than the grandest derring-do. ~ Nancy Atherton

Don't underestimate your opponent, but don't overestimate them, either. ~ Nancy Pelosi

It is absolutely okay with me if you need to keep some secrets. I've been thinking about this and I decided that a best friend is someone who, when they don't understand, they still understand. ~ Nancy Werlin

Even now I can't describe why I love skating so much. ~ Nancy Kerrigan

Dressed to Live

Today is my newest garment.

Let me put it on
with ceremony.
Let me step into the day
as if to bathe in the passing hours.
Let me tuck in the loose ends
with precision.

Today is my newest garment.

Let me wear it as if it holds
my head high,
as if it can carry me
on its shoulders,
as if it will protect me
from the howl.

Today is my newest garment.

Let me fill my pockets.
Let them bulge with riches:
light on the wide sidewalk,
kind words from a stranger,
things perched, newly born,
carefully placed, aging gracefully.

Today is my newest garment.

At night
let me disrobe
grateful and whole,
knowing that
tomorrow
I will dress again. ~ Nancy Boutilier

I want a guy who wants to curl up on a Friday night and watch Netflix. He can even pick the show. I mean, ideally, it's serialized and female-driven, ~ Mindy Kaling

Ash has a huge customized Barbie collection. Aside from Horror Movie Barbie (head lopped halfway off, torn and bloody clothes), Commando Barbie (camouflage bandana, pistol-whipping Ken with toy guns stolen from Josh), there is my personal favorite, Fat Barbie (dressed in a muumuu, sporting extra body girth and a double chin, thanks to the discreet placement of Silly Putty), I think Fat Barbie is genius but Nancy flipped out when she saw her. Our mother, whose statuesque blond Minnesouda beauty makes her look like a Barbie, is a size four on her bloated days. ~ Rachel Cohn

If you've seen 'Friday Night Lights' - that was just like my town. ~ Chris Crutcher

Many Christians with Ph.D.'s have simply absorbed a two-track approach to their subject, treating science or sociology or history as though it consisted of religiously neutral knowledge, where biblical truth has nothing important to say. ~ Nancy Pearcey

Just as there are many Jews who keep the Friday ritual in their home despite describing themselves as atheists, I am a 'tribal Christian,' happy to attend church services. ~ Martin Rees

I believe there's a place on the brink of suffering where all of one's emotions gather like great philosophers. They reason amongst themselves on the best course of action. But it is only when love stands up and decides when and where the line must be drawn that all of the other emotions fall silent in agreement because they know that love is never wrong. It's in that moment of pure love that decisions and action become clear. ~ Nancy Stephan

For the first time in my life, writing was hard. The problem was the teaching ... by most Friday afternoons I felt as if I'd spent the week with jumper cables clamped to my brain. ~ Stephen King

If one can't be happy, one must be amused ... ~ Nancy Mitford

Slaves of Plastic! Leather-shoe chino-pants prisoners! Haircut junkies! Dacron-shiffers! ~ Allen Ginsberg

I don't mind," he whispered. "If I had a soul, I'd probably wind up in hell anyway. ~ Nancy Farmer

No money changed hands, of course. ~ Nancy Pelosi

Fiction is about stuff that's screwed up. ~ Nancy Kress

I'm nothing but envious that you've been happily married for two years. Try hauling your cookies on a new blind date every Friday, only to have your, already extremely low, expectations dashed as you meet men who look like Quasimodo and have Homer Simpson's IQ. ~ Jane Green

The heart of the prudent acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge" (Proverbs 18:15). We see again this theme of seriously pursuing knowledge and wisdom. Prudence is a heart attitude, not an IQ level. It is not lazy, but is studying God's Word for more knowledge. I hope you have noticed how often these virtues are connected with knowledge and learning. A wise woman is acquiring knowledge, seeking knowledge, and increasing in learning. She is not intellectually lazy. "When ~ Nancy Wilson

...the phone rang.

When the phone rang so early in the morning, it oftentimes meant somebody was dead. An elderly person had passed in the night. A Friday night traffic fatality. The families of deceased would set about the task of notifying family and friends, and somewhere among the sad litany of phone calls, they dialed our number. ~ Ravi Howard

People who talk about peace are very often the most quarrelsome. ~ Nancy Astor

Gail smiled. "A gracious concession. We're not much alike, dear heart."
"Nothing alike."
"So why - "
"Oh, God, not this," Nan said. "Every lover I've ever had has run this program on me eventually. 'Why us?' Why not? And don't go thinking that by that I mean we're just a one night's roll-and-tickle, Gail. I like you. I just don't want to analyze why. Ask me something else. ~ Nancy Kress

An unhealthy life is destined to end with an unhealthy death. ~ Nancy S. Mure

The Democrats cannot find Romney fingerprints on what's happening to this country. Every fingerprint is Barack Obama's, Joe Biden's, Nancy Pelosi's, Harry Reid's, Barney Frank's, you name it, Eric Holder. ~ Rush Limbaugh

Bell seated himself behind the desk, motioning for Nancy to stand opposite him. There was tense silence for a moment. Then Bell reached for a desk telephone.
"I am going to call the police, Miss Drew, and turn you over to them on a charge of trespassing, breaking, and entering with an attempt to steal."
"I wish you would," Nancy replied. "if it is possible over that dummy telephone. ~ Carolyn Keene