I love medieval cities; they do not clamor for attention; they possess their souls – their riches – in quiet; formal, courteous, they reveal themselves slowly, stone by stone, garden by garden; hidden treasures wait calmly to be loved and yield to introspective wandering.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISONTo offer the complexities of life as an excuse for not addressing oneself to the simpler, more manageable (trivial) aspects of daily existence is a perversity often indulged in by artists, husbands, intellectuals — and critics of the Women’s Movement.
More Barbara Grizzuti Harrison Quotes
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Facts mean nothing to wounded feelings.
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Desire creates its own object.
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Nothing is more democratic, less judgmental, than water. Water doesn’t care whether flesh is withered or fresh; it caresses aged flesh and firm flesh with equal love.
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the gardens of our childhood are all beautiful.
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Unhappiness makes beggars or accountants of us all.
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Women’s propensity to share confidences is universal. We confirm our reality by sharing.
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Weather creates character.
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All acts performed in the world begin in the imagination.
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Violence is its own anesthetist. The numbness it induces feels very much like calm.
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Belief sometimes precedes understanding; faith sometimes precedes scientific evidence.
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One can be tired of Rome after three weeks and feel one has exhausted it; after three months one feels that one has not even scratched the surface of Rome; and after six months one wishes never to leave it.
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Insanity is a lack of proportion.
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to have a crisis, and act upon it, is one thing. To dwell in perpetual crisis is another.
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There is no way to take the danger out of human relationships.
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There are places one comes home to that one has never been to.
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The past can be tamed and controlled.
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the islands of Italy combine all the elements – fire, water, earth, and air – and that is irresistible.
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In the face of evil, detachment is a dubious virtue.
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Great unhappiness is incompatible with the belief that it will ever end.
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It’s the perpetually unfinished quality of housework that makes it oppressive – it never ends, like bad psychoanalysis, or a dream interrupted. It is paradoxically true that it is exactly this daily re-creation of the world that lends housekeeping its nobility and romance.
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Italians do not regard food as merely fuel. They regard it as medicine for the soul, one of life’s abiding pleasures.
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Illness is regarded as a crime, and crime is regarded as illness.
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Children hold us hostage; they represent our commitment to the future.
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What you desire you call into being.
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Food is my drug of choice.
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To live exhilaratingly in and for the moment is deadly serious work, fun of the most exhausting sort
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON