Laura Wang > Laura's Quotes

“Odd as it may seem, I am my remembering self, and the experiencing self, who does my living, is like a stranger to me.”
― Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

“Nothing in life is as important as you think it is, while you are thinking about it”
― Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

“Adaptation to a new situation, whether good or bad, consists in large part of thinking less and less about it.”
― Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

“But it is nonetheless disturbing to find mothers actively engaged in sabotaging one another, blind to their common ground. Think about it: women against poor mothers on welfare; women against rich Zoe Baird. Women against their husbands' first wives; mothers embroiled in endless mommy wars. Working mothers aren't "doing their job" at home, while mothers at home don't have a "real" job. The net effect of all of this belittling is to obscure the larger reality that mothers as a group are performing an enormous amount of essential unpaid labor.”
― Ann Crittenden, The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World Is Still the Least Valued

“we are more than just our genes. We are, in some way, a product of the people who surround us—the people we’re forced to grow up with, and the people we choose to be with later.”
― Robert Kolker, Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family

“Our relationships can destroy us, but they can change us, too, and restore us, and without us ever seeing it happen, they define us. We are human because the people around us make us human.”
― Robert Kolker, Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family

“They taught me to embrace the cards you are dealt or it will eat you alive. If you go to the heart of your own matter, you will find only by loving and helping do you have peace from your own trauma.”
― Robert Kolker, Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family

“Rather than think of Don Galvin that way, Richard adopted a convenient self-delusion. Not the sort of delusion that fits a DSM criterion. But we all have stories we tell ourselves.”
― Robert Kolker, Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family

“It’s perfectly possible to be smarter than everyone else and still be polite and even deferential—women have been doing it for centuries.”
― Jennifer Wright, Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them

“If you’ve left town, like John, you can hold on to your truth. To come home is to run the risk of being contradicted. Even the people who leave, like John, can feel almost rejected.”
― Robert Kolker, Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family

“When you don't find a sense of love and belonging where you are, you go searching for it somewhere else.”
― Robert Kolker, Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family

“Telling people that things are fine is not the same as making them fine.”
― Jennifer Wright, Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them