A biography for Ellen Goodmanhasn’t been written yet.
“Those inevitable dreams where you can't get your column in, you know, and at first they were the Xerox telecopy, and then they were the fax machine, and then they were, you know, email. The anxiety remains the same, but the technology has changed.”
“The things we hate about ourselves aren't more real than things we like about ourselves.”
“When we describe what the other person is really like, I suppose we often picture what we want. We look through the prism of our need.”
“Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.”
“Call me a cockeyed pessimist, but I'm having trouble finding any good news in the trashing of Harriet Miers.”
“When I was at 'Newsweek' magazine - which, you know, this really sounds like I walked four miles in the snow to school - but I started at 'Newsweek' magazine in 1963, which was before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. So it was actually legal to discriminate against women, and 'Newsweek' did.”
“Values are not trendy items that are casually traded in.”
“In journalism, there has always been a tension between getting it first and getting it right.”
“Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work, driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for, in order to get to a job that you need so you can pay for the clothes, car and the house that you leave empty all day in order to afford to live in it.”
“We owned what we learned back there; the experience and the growth are grafted into our lives.”
“You can fire your secretary, divorce your spouse, abandon your children. But they remain your co-authors forever.”
“It's self-deceptive to think we're in a post-feminist world when we never tried a feminist world.”
“Most people do not consider dawn to be an attractive experience - unless they are still up.”
“The women's movement was always going to work in two parts. With one part, we'd break open the doors that were closed to women, and with the other part, we'd walk through, transforming society for men and women. Turns out it was a lot easier to open the doors.”
“There's a trick to the Graceful Exit. It begins with the vision to recognize when a job, a life stage, a relationship is over - and to let go. It means leaving what's over without denying its value.”
“I think that having a job in journalism, despite all of the changes, is still a fantastic way to be - make a living observing your society and having a chance to use your voice.”
“We spend January 1st walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives...not looking for flaws, but for potential.”
“I regard this novel as a work without redeeming social value, unless it can be recycled as a cardboard box.”
“Traditions are the guideposts driven deep in our subconscious minds. The most powerful ones are those we can't even describe, aren't even aware of.”
“We are told that people stay in love because of chemistry, or because they remain intrigued with each other, because of many kindnesses, because of luck. But part of it has got to be forgiveness and gratefulness.”