Susan Cheever Quotes

There is no other closeness in human life like the closeness between a mother and her baby - chronologically, physically, and spiritually they are just a few heartbeats away from being the same person.

You mustn’t be so open-minded that your brains fall out.

Womens currency is their looks. Like it or not, the most powerful woman is an 18-year-old woman.

Addiction isnt about substance - you arent addicted to the substance, you are addicted to the alteration of mood that the substance brings.

Personal experience is the lightning of the soul; it transforms the heart in ways that leave the brain behind.

I think 12-step programs really work, rehab really works, certain types of therapies and talking to other addicts really work. There are a lot of things that work - that isn't the problem. The problem is getting the addicts to say they're addicts. The problem is admitting it.

Writers often write their best when they are feeling their worst

If a woman is surrounded by lovers or if a woman has a lot of guys asking her out, that's considered wonderful. As a woman who's slept with a lot of men, I've always been complimented on my ability to attract men.

There is no such thing as expecting too much.

Death is terrifying because it is so ordinary. It happens all the time.

Dogs are great teachers. They are at home in the world. They live in the moment, and they force us to stay there with them. Dogs love us unconditionally, not for our bodies or bank accounts.

Love is a great wrecker of peace of mind.

All writers have strengths and weaknesses. I am terrified of being boring, so I write short, compressed stories that sometimes don't give a reader time to think about what they have read. I struggle to slow down.

Guilt is petty; I am above guilt.

I believe that the memoir is the novel of the 21st century; it’s an amazing form that we haven’t even begun to tap…we’re just getting started figuring out what the rules are.

I don't really think of writing as a career. It's something that happened to me. By working harder than I knew it was possible to work, I have become passable at it.

Obsession is so extreme and so hard to imagine with the rational mind that it has a science-fiction-like quality to it-it's almost as if the obsessed one has been taken over by a replica, a pod, a facsimile of the rational person.

Falling in love as we know it is an addictive experience.

Pregnancy is difficult for women but it is even more difficult for men.

Whenever there was a crisis, I found a man to help me take the edge off the feelings of helplessness and pain.

When Tolstoy wrote that all happy families are alike, what he meant was that there are no happy families.

The actual American childhood is less Norman Rockwell and Walt Disney than Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe.

Our [western] culture embraces sex addiction. If I drink too much or rack up credit-card debt or lose the rent in Vegas, that's bad. But if I have many lovers, that's good.

There were a number of books about Bill Wilson, and by him, but a lot of the basic biographical tasks had not been done.

A fierce literary woman with a penchant for married men, Margaret Fuller was ultimately torn between motherhood and her final career as a political reporter.