A biography for Gail Sheehyhasn’t been written yet.
“Creativity can be described as letting go of certainties.”
“The feminist spirit still lives! It shows most boldly among younger women from the millennial generation.”
“It was my very good fortune to find a mentor, Clay Felker, who started my career at the 'New York Magazine' as a freelance writer when I had to quit my job at the 'Herald Tribune' to stay home with my young daughter.”
“There is no more defiant denial of one man's ability to possess one woman exclusively than the prostitute who refuses to redeemed.”
“Sex and older women used to be considered an oxymoron, rarely mentioned in the same breath.”
“Being a pathfinder is to be willing to risk failure and still go on.”
“In the case of my husband, we found that facing a life-threatening illness prodded us to make a dramatic change in our lives.”
“I do think women can have it all - but not all women. If you take daring steps and are smart about it, you can probably have it all. But you might have to wait a while.”
“Most women have learned a great deal about how to set goals for our First Adulthood and how to roll with the punches when we hit a rough passage. But we're less prepared for our Second Adulthood as we approach life after retirement, where there are no fixed entrances or exits, and lots of sand into which it is easy to bury our heads.”
“My husband, Clay Felker, died 17 years after his first cancer due to secondary conditions that developed from treatment.”
“When I was immobilized by fear, I might have a panic attack. I've had a couple of panic attacks in my life.”
“We see it in the body, that if you just give the body enough rest and comfort, it has remarkable self-healing capacities. Well, so does the spirit.”
“The dream for many millennial women is to make a difference as social or political entrepreneurs. They are using the social media and marketing tools they have mastered to empower less fortunate women and direct them onto career tracks that women have traditionally avoided, like science and technology.”
“If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we aren't really living.”
“When men reach their sixties and retire, they go to pieces. Women go right on cooking.”
“We have to move from the unbridled pursuit of self-gain at the expense of others to recovering appreciation for what we gain by caring and sharing with one another.”
“It is a paradox that as we reach out prime, we also see there is a place where it finishes.”
“I actually interviewed other people about myself, and that alerted me to the fact that I had to really investigate my memories.”
“Ah, mastery... what a profoundly satisfying feeling when one finally gets on top of a new set of skills... and then sees the light under the new door those skills can open, even as another door is closing.”
“Eventually, all mentor-disciple relationships are meant to pull apart, usually sometime in the mid-30s. Those who hang on, eventually the mentor drops the disciple, and that's no fun.”