13 Quotes & Sayings By Betsy Lerner

Betsy Lerner is a freelance writer, speaker, and journalist. She writes about the intersection of business and culture, specializing in leadership, gender, and the business world. She has written for "Adweek," "Business 2.0," "The New York Times," "Fast Company," "Working Woman," "Glamour," "Money," "Glamour's" "Women on Top" blog, and other publications. She is the author of three books: two nonfiction business books, one focusing on leadership at work, and an autobiography about her life in the service industry.

[I]t's the child writer who has figured out, early on,...
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[I]t's the child writer who has figured out, early on, that writing is about saving your soul. Betsy Lerner
The world doesn't fully make sense until the writer has...
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The world doesn't fully make sense until the writer has secured his version of it on the page. And the act of writing is strangely more lifelike than life. Betsy Lerner
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But I also believe there is enormous value in the piece of writing that goes no further than the one person for whom it was intended, that no combination of written words is more eloquent than those exchanged in letters between lovers or friends, or along the pale blue lines of private diaries, where people take communion with themselves. Betsy Lerner
No matter how many compromises were made along the way,...
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No matter how many compromises were made along the way, no matter what happens in the future, a book is a thing to behold. Betsy Lerner
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I...
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God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change. The courage to change the things I can. And the wisdom to know the difference. I still didn't know the difference. Betsy Lerner
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But editors are still the world's readers. And thus the eyes of the world. Betsy Lerner
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I hadn't been able to trust since the age of four. I was torn between wanting to be cradled and telling the world to go fuck itself, and those were opposite sides of the same coin. Betsy Lerner
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When an editor works with an author, she cannot help seeing into the medicine cabinet of his soul. All the terrible emotions, the desire for vindications, the paranoia, and the projection are bottled in there, along with all the excesses of envy, desire for revenge, all the hypochondriacal responses, rituals, defenses, and the twin obsessions with sex and money. It other words, the stuff of great books. Betsy Lerner
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I had officially joined the cacophony of sick mother fuckers. Betsy Lerner
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Nothing was a more powerful compass of my mood or a better indication of my self-worth than the number on the scale. Betsy Lerner
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...but every person who does serious time with a keyboard is attempting to translate his version of the world into words so that he might be understood. Betsy Lerner
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It was a miracle to me, this transformation of my acorns into an oak. Betsy Lerner