Ariel Levy

“I haven't really rebelled. I just think my parents were right. I never disagreed with anything that I was brought up with, in terms of their values or politics.”

“I think it would be difficult to argue that I'm a net-negative for womankind. I've tried pretty hard to bring in unusual female voices and perspectives. Not just young women and not just white women, either. I don't know that I'm the best target for improvement. I don't know that I'm the problem.”

“I'm a writer, not an activist. My job is to analyse things, to think them through and examine them.”

“I'm not a polemicist; I had no business writing a polemic.”

“There's two identity markers I'm sure of, and one is, I'm Jewish. And the other is, I'm a writer. There's just no arguing with either thing. I'm just Jewish.”

“For 10 minutes, I was somebody's mother, and that was both the most traumatic and also the most transcendent experience of my life.”

“Grief is a world you walk through skinned, unshelled.”

“A wedding, a great wedding, is just a blast. A celebration of romance and community and love... What is unfun about that? Nothing.”

“I feel like I turn into my grandma when I'm pecking away at Twitter. And I don't care.”

“No one could save me from the grief of losing my child or losing my first marriage. I had to do that on my own.”

“I decided early that I would be a writer when I grew up. That, I thought, was the profession that went with the kind of woman I wanted to become: one who is free to do whatever she chooses.”

“I was not big on playing house. I preferred make-believe that revolved around adventure, featuring pirates and knights. I was also domineering, impatient, relentlessly verbal, and, as an only child, often baffled by the mores of other kids.”

“Why is this the "new feminism" and not what it looks like: the old objectification?”

“I never understood what the big deal is about privacy.”

“I started keeping a diary in third grade and, in solidarity with Anne Frank, gave it a name and made it my confidante. To this day, I feel comforted and relieved of loneliness, no matter how foreign my surroundings, if I have a pad and a pen with which to record my experiences.”

“I was never any good at keeping secrets.”

“A tawdry, cartoonlike version of female sexuality has become so ubiquitous, it no longer seems particular. What we once regarded as a *kind* of sexual expression we now regard *as* sexuality.”

“I don't understand the interweb.”

“There is a widespread assumption that simply because my generation of women has the good fortune to live in a world touched by the feminist movement, that means everything we do is magically imbued with its agenda, but it doesn't work that way.”

“I think what's dangerous about marriage is the way it can make you feel like you've got it all wrapped up. Like you're done: you've found your spouse, you've married him or her, and you don't need to think too much more about it.”