1
People who are less happy, I find, are always consoling those who are more.Renata Adler
2
Self-pity” is just sadness, I think, in the pejorative.Renata Adler
3
Sometimes I think they are writers who do not write. That "writers write" is meant to be self-evident. People like to say it. I find it is hardly ever true. Writers drink. Writers rant. Writers phone. Writers sleep. I have met very few writers that write at all.Renata Adler
4
Do you realize how angry you sound?” must be one of the most infuriating questions in the language.Renata Adler
5
Speech, tennis, music, skiing, manners, love- you try them waking and perhaps balk at the jump, and then you're over. You've caught the rhythm of them once and for all, in your sleep at night. The city, of course, can wreck it. So much insomnia. So many rhythms collide. The salesgirl, the landlord, the guests, the bystanders, sixteen varieties of social circumstance in a day. Everyone has the power to call your whole life into question here. Too many people have access to your state of mind. Some people are indifferent to dislike, even relish it. Hardly anyone I know. .Renata Adler
6
My dislike has no consequences. It accrues only in my mind–like preserves on a shelf or guns zeroing in, and never firing.Renata Adler
7
My capacity for having a good time exists. It surfaces, however, on odd occasions.Renata Adler
8
The salesgirl, the landlord, the guests, the bystanders, sixteen varieties of social circumstance in a day. Everyone has the power to call your whole life into question here. Too many people have access to your state of mind. Some people are indifferent to dislike, even relish it. Hardly anyone I know.Renata Adler
9
The style of flirtation specific to classrooms was of service to the students all their lives.Renata Adler