Lerner's Quotes

The bolder and more courageous you are, the more you will learn about yourself. — Harriet Lerner

Wherever you find a wife and mother-in-law slugging it out, you'll find a son who's not speaking up to either his mother or his wife. — Harriet Lerner

Authors like reading. Go figure. So it's not surprising that we sometimes bog down in the research stage of new writing projects. — Edward M. Lerner

Every mob, in its ignorance and blindness and bewilderment, is a League of Frightened Men that seeks reassurance in collective action. — Max Lerner

Man's will creates the things that paralyze his brain and brutalize his heart. — Max Lerner

If you provide good alternatives for public transport, you won't have traffic problems. — Jaime Lerner

Creativity starts when you cut a zero from your budget. — Jaime Lerner

Being in touch with our bodies, or more accurately, being our bodies, is how we know what is true. Harriet — Harriet Lerner

A people's speech is the skin of its culture. — Max Lerner

Men die but an idea does not. — Alan Jay Lerner

The language of poetry is the exact opposite of the language of mass media, I said, meaninglessly. — Ben Lerner

[I]t's the child writer who has figured out, early on, that writing is about saving your soul. — Betsy Lerner

Believing that all women should want to be mothers makes about as much sense as believing that all men should want to be engineers. — Harriet Lerner

People marry with a deep longing that their partner will tend to their wounds, not throw salt in them. Honor your partner's vulnerability. — Harriet Lerner

There's a smile on my face for the whole human race. — Alan Jay Lerner

The body, seeking truth, sends a signal. But decoding it, interpreting its meaning, and knowing how to proceed from there is another matter entirely. — Harriet Lerner

Anxiety is extremely contagious, but so is calm. — Harriet Lerner

The nimble of mind long for the challenge of new discoveries. Weary minds cling to what is already known. — K. Lee Lerner

When I started working on women's history about thirty years ago, the field did not exist. People didn't think that women had a history worth knowing. — Gerda Lerner

It's just a game," she says. Make no mistake: people who say it's just a game are out for blood. — Betsy Lerner

what fuels human unhappiness in both the personal and political realm can be boiled down to these three key emotions - anxiety, fear, and shame. — Harriet Lerner

When I was in graduate school in consumer science and math, all of the big companies had labs, all doing blue sky research. — Sandra Lerner

Whatever your sex fantasy is with your partner, consider it normal. — Harriet Lerner

Intensity is not the same as intimacy, although we tend to confuse these two words. — Harriet Lerner

Although it's not useful to drown in despair, it's also not useful to keep a 'positive attitude' when this means concealing or denying real emotions. — Harriet Lerner

At Cisco, I made every decision based on what was good for the company, and that pretty much ruined my marriage and my health. — Sandra Lerner

We all fear change, even as we seek it. — Harriet Lerner

Judging people for whom they love (a same sex partner) rather than by whom they harm, should in itself merit a psychiatric diagnosis. — Harriet Lerner

I was a violent, bipolar, compulsive liar. I was a real American. — Ben Lerner

Winning our fans' approval will come from all of us doing the right things for the right reasons, me included. — Randy Lerner

I seek peace, let me BE peace. — Michael Lerner

I have no interest in artists who are purely affirmative, who've made a commercialized fetish of the culture's stupidity. — Ben Lerner

Read, re-read and un-read! — Lailah Gifty Akita

The story and the poem are obviously changed by being placed in the novel, so in a sense they're no longer the works that preceded the novel. — Ben Lerner

I could displace the mystery of my speech onto writing, the latter perhaps recharging the former — Ben Lerner

[A] "poem" is understood as [something] referring to a failure of language to be equal to the possibilities it figures — Ben Lerner

The transpersonal is more awe-inspiring, more exciting than the thing we confuse it for. — Ben Lerner

The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. — Ben Lerner

I am neither an optimist nor pessimist, but a possibilist. — Max Lerner

You can't evaluate a prospective partner if you insulate your relationship from your family and friends
and his. — Harriet Lerner

We met at nine We met at eight I was on time No, you were late Ah yes! I remember it well. — Alan Jay Lerner

It's the worst sort of snobbery to condemn a book without reading it, merely because it's popular. — Rose Lerner

When anxiety disrupts functioning, it's psychiatric illness. — Harriet Lerner

Women's history is women's right-an essential, indispensable heritage from which we can draw pride, comfort, courage, and long range vision. — Gerda Lerner

If I do decide to have a Girl's Gone Wild moment, I want it to be with some hot young thing, not a senior citizen-Jaycie Lerner — Natasha Larry

I've never really seen other people spend other people's money wisely. — Sandra Lerner

A city is like a family portrait - you don't tear it up if you don't like your uncle's nose. — Jaime Lerner

Collaboration is a nice change of pace from the often solitary nature of the writer's craft. — Edward M. Lerner

The happiest people are focused on living their own life (not someone else's) as well as possible. — Harriet Lerner

There's a widespread belief that if you have solid self-esteem you don't need outside affirmation and praise. This is patently untrue, by the way. — Harriet Lerner

I understood Truman Capote's brilliant assessment of the writer's dilemma: When God hands you a gift, he also hands you a whip. — Betsy Lerner

There is a hate layer of opinion and emotion in America. There will be other McCarthys to come who will be hailed as its heroes. — Max Lerner

One doesn't just wander unvetted into someone else's epic interstellar future history. — Edward M. Lerner

We commonly confuse closeness with sameness and view intimacy as the merging of two separate I's into one worldview. — Harriet Lerner

We cannot live by power, and a culture that seeks to live by it becomes brutal and sterile. But we can die without it. — Max Lerner

Women's history is the
primary tool for women's emancipation. — Gerda Lerner

But editors are still the world's readers. And thus the eyes of the world. — Betsy Lerner

We had a small farm growing up. It was my grandfather's farm, and we didn't torture the animals, and we didn't feed them stuff we wouldn't eat. — Sandra Lerner

Get this under control as soon as you can young lady, because no one here gives a damn about your unlimited power-Mason Lerner — Natasha Larry

It's remarkable how many couples can precisely describe their particular pattern of painful fighting, and claim to be helpless to change it. — Harriet Lerner

The distinguishing characteristic of the techno-thriller is technical detail. — Edward M. Lerner

Your children are not little mirrors reflecting back the good or bad job you've done. — Harriet Lerner

Men are often (though not always) the pursuers for sex, just like women are often (though not always) the pursuers for conversation. — Harriet Lerner

I could imagine it in a way that felt like remembering — Ben Lerner

Somehow life doesn't always pay off to those who are most insistent. — Max Lerner

A city grows like an organism. It is a structure of living and working together a mix of functions. — Jaime Lerner

You see what happens today. Women act like men and want to be treated like women. — Alan Jay Lerner

We can't have landfills forever, and we can't ask others to accept our trash. — Jaime Lerner

But every person who does serious time with a keyboard is attempting to translate his version of the world into words so that he might be understood. — Betsy Lerner

If you pursue a distancer, he or she will distance more. Consider it a fundamental law of physics. — Harriet Lerner

I have come to know well that fates are fickle in the business of English football. And I feel that I have pushed mine well past the limit. — Randy Lerner

What counted was not the facts but the fears. — Max Lerner

I've been building a fiction in part around the Marfa poem since my brief residency there, which has kept it from receding into the past. — Ben Lerner

What I want to know it whether we're supposed to change or just accept who we are? — Betsy Lerner

We need to hear the sound of our voice for what we think and need. — Harriet Lerner

Some books are serials, not to be mistaken for anything else. 'The Two Towers,' for example, ought never to be read in isolation. — Edward M. Lerner

Nothing you say can ensure that the other person will get it, or respond the way you want. You may never exceed his threshold of deafness. — Harriet Lerner

venting anger does not solve the problem that anger signals. — Harriet Lerner

You write a hit the same way you write a flop. — Alan Jay Lerner

When choosing the lesser of two evils, always remember, it is still an evil. — Max Lerner

What initially attracts us and what later becomes 'the problem' are usually one and the same. — Harriet Lerner

People say things die in winter, but it isn't true, mostly. They just gather their strength. — Rose Lerner

Every relationship can feel saturated by market logic or at best purchased at the price of the immiseration of others. — Ben Lerner

You may call for peace as loudly as you wish, but where there is no brotherhood there can in the end be no peace. — Max Lerner

If you're going to give people authority and hold them responsible and ultimately accountable for their performance, you've got to get out of the way. — Randy Lerner

If you want creativity, take a zero off your budget. If you want sustainability, take off two zeros. — Jaime Lerner

America shudders at anything alien, and when it wants to shut its mind against any man's ideas it calls him a foreigner. — Max Lerner

Of the many things we have done to democracy in the past, the worst has been the indignity of taking it for granted. — Max Lerner

You know teenage boys, you own one-Mason Lerner — Natasha Larry

I'm defending fiction as a human capacity more than as a popular or dying literary genre. — Ben Lerner

Art has to offer something other than stylized despair. — Ben Lerner

Just in case God isn't dead, our astronauts carry sidearms. — Ben Lerner

An Englishman's way of speaking absolutely classifies him. — Alan Jay Lerner

The voices and laughter and birds and wind and traffic combined and separated gently. — Ben Lerner

Experiments with the "as if" of fiction are often more lively in poetry and criticism and other modes of writing than in weak short stories or novels. — Ben Lerner

Mud can make you prisoner and the plains can make you dry. Snow can burn your eyes but only people make you cry. — Alan Jay Lerner

I could have spread my wings and done a thousand things I've never done before. — Alan Jay Lerner

How many out-of-character things did I need to do, I wondered, before the world rearranged itself around me? — Ben Lerner

AT&T to wed T-Mobile. Following the ceremony there will be no reception. — Richard Lerner

Loneliness Ends With Love — Al Lerner