Top 89 Quotes & Sayings by Mallory Ortberg

Explore popular quotes and sayings by Mallory Ortberg.
Last updated on December 23, 2024.
Mallory Ortberg

Daniel M. Lavery is an American author and editor. He is known for having co-founded the website The Toast, and written the books Texts from Jane Eyre (2014), The Merry Spinster (2018), and Something That May Shock and Discredit You (2020). He wrote Slate's "Dear Prudence" advice column from 2016 to 2021. As of 2022, he hosts a podcast on Slate titled Big Mood, Little Mood. In 2017, he started a paid e-mail newsletter on Substack titled Shatner Chatner, renamed to The Chatner in 2021.

Born: November 28, 1986
I don't think it's a requirement that a happy, fulfilling relationship also provide the best sex of all time.
It's OK to tell your partner to objectify you. That's part of the fun of having a partner.
As you feel increasingly comfortable around your friends, I think it's more than fine to share the basic details of your heroin addiction with them. If they seem receptive, you can feel free to talk about it in further detail; if they seem judgmental or uncomfortable, you can move on to other topics.
Nothing good comes of reading other people's emails. — © Mallory Ortberg
Nothing good comes of reading other people's emails.
Someone who responds to "Please don't grope me" with whining and pouting isn't a friend. He's an asshole and a predator.
Asexuality does not make our lives any worse or any better, we just face a different set of challenges than most sexual people.
"Not being virulently and overtly racist against black people" and "treating gay people like human beings" are necessary conditions of greatness.
Your partner cannot fault you for refusing to host a perpetual-motion party or for the fact that you must sleep and will eventually die.
Not wanting to give everyone in your life one of your kidneys is not the same thing as hoping they die of kidney failure.
I hate to get gender essentialist, but I'm starting to think that a lot of married men have some sort of heterosexually induced dentistry aversion.
o one is right when it comes to destination weddings. It’s a big ask, requesting people take time off work and fly off to take a cruise just to see you get married, and they’re perfectly justified in saying no if they don’t have the time, the money, or simply the inclination.
Five-foot-8 is a perfectly normal height for a woman - it's slightly but not at all unusually tall and certainly shouldn't be causing you any torment.
I don't know of any way to control the subject of one's dreams although I'm fairly certain there are more than a few types of psychoanalysis dedicated to the topic.
Someone who has a disability is not necessarily in distress. You may be embarrassing and inconveniencing someone by butting in and making assumptions.
A child is not a bargaining chip or a learning tool. Your focus, if you adopt a child of a different race, should be on nurturing and protecting your child from bigotry, not deploying him or her as an anti-racist Mr. Fix-It.
Bad dental hygiene can lead to respiratory infections and an increased risk for heart disease and strokes. — © Mallory Ortberg
Bad dental hygiene can lead to respiratory infections and an increased risk for heart disease and strokes.
I don't think unfriending your old crush on Facebook will do much other than remove him from your Facebook feed. Don't beat yourself up over what you dream about; there are a lot worse things that could slip across the transom of your unconscious mind than an old high school crush who was always nice to you.
I'm of the opinion that it is always a kind and appropriate decision to get in touch with someone who's lost a loved one to remind them that you're thinking of them and have fond memories of the deceased.
You can't prevent a possible future closeness between your upcoming child and one or more of their grandparents.
Don't beat yourself up over what you dream about.
There has to be some kind of personal hygiene bar that a person needs to clear in order for a relationship to be successful.
Reciprocating oral sex is, in general, a very good idea!
Reconciliation is not possible when one party asks the other to obliterate all signs of their relationship.
Don't badger people without children into admitting the secret desire for children you're sure they have to you! Don't badger anyone! Leave the badgering to the badgers.
You have a wonderful opportunity here to not care about something that doesn’t matter to you. Please don’t miss out on it.
So many people choose silence after the immediate wake of a death out of fear of saying something out of turn or "bringing up bad memories" that bereaved people often feel forgotten.
If you get a dog, take care of your dog! You can just not have a dog if you don't feel like taking care of one, it's very easy to not have a dog.
Arm yourself with as many options as possible before making your next move.
If you don't like potlucks, the solution to your problem is "don't go to potlucks," not "insist other people don't have them."
LGBT youth face a much higher risk of violence and homelessness after being rejected by their family of origin.
As long as you don't think he's just pretending not to mind for your sake, it sounds like he has truly accepted that blow jobs are too difficult and painful for you to perform, and he's still very satisfied with your sex life. Take him at his word.
Kids know when they're getting yelled at and mocked, I can assure you.
Enjoy your relationship with your boyfriend and don't worry about the people or situations you dream about. Once you wake up, they're over; let them go.
I'm pretty sure there's no sexuality that justifies constant low-level harassment.
If your partner asks you if something bothers you, and something bothers you, the best thing you can do is say, "Yes, it bothers me." Otherwise you create a situation where they think everything is fine, continue with the offending behavior, while you build up a secret reservoir of resentment that will eventually come pouring out, to their shock.
Some struggling marriages can be salvaged with hard work and counseling; others should be dismantled and stripped for parts.
There are alternatives to pregnancy if you want another child.
Many fathers go their entire lives without announcing how sexy their son's old girlfriends are.
Most of us, however committed we are to our ideals, will find ourselves every now and again reading an attention-grabbing headline from the Daily Mail or some other lowest-common denominator. That's not the same thing as frequenting a site like the white supremacist Stormfront.
You have a right to be treated professionally at work, and it's your supervisor's job to make sure all their employees can perform their duties comfortably and safely.
An adult woman should not be so possessive of her own birthday that she begrudges her friends the chance to get married on the same day. — © Mallory Ortberg
An adult woman should not be so possessive of her own birthday that she begrudges her friends the chance to get married on the same day.
Tenancy laws can be so complicated; I want to make sure OP is protected as much as possible.
If just one person touches you without your permission, stepping back and saying clearly, "Please don't touch me" should get them to stop.
If this is something you'd truly like to work on, not out of a sense of guilt but because you would enjoy occasionally reciprocating, there are a wealth of resources out there for the enthusiastic amateur (you are far from the only would-be blow-jobber whose spirit is willing but gag reflex is weak). You have more options than "no blow jobs, ever" and "regular whole-hog sessions to completion that result in vomiting."
It can't hurt to have a backup.
It's one thing to be a high achiever; it's quite another to privately sneer at your girlfriend's friends after feigning friendliness because they have the "misfortune" to drive a bus for a living.
I do not think it is selfish to want to donate a kidney "only" to family members.
Acting politely in front of someone black and/or gay and then making horrible claims about their intelligence or worth as human beings after they leave the room is not kindness - it's hypocrisy.
Letting events end is not rude. Everything ends.
To stop challenging someone from using anti-gay language simply because they persist in using anti-gay language strikes me as a defeatist approach.
The hardest part about being ghosted is the fact that you can't deal with the ghoster directly. You just never hear from them again, and everything feels odd and incomplete.
You are allowed to draw lines even if your feelings are irrational. Part of the marvelous business of being an adult human is that you get to set your own boundaries for whatever reasons you like, without appending a sensible rationale to them.
Some people give gifts in order to bewilder, confuse, and manipulate their recipients. — © Mallory Ortberg
Some people give gifts in order to bewilder, confuse, and manipulate their recipients.
Anyone who wants to pretend that your Huntington's disease is an invention is someone who does not have your best interests at heart.
A woman who repeatedly asks a man she knows to be gay when he's going to get married and have children is not trying to let sleeping dogs lie.
Depression cannot be overcome by listing a series of good things in one's life, any more than a broken foot can be healed by thinking about all the other bones you have that aren't broken.
Periodontal bacteria can easily slip into the bloodstream and cause infection elsewhere in the body.
I love the art history ones because it's so little work for me. There's so many paintings that when I look at them, the look on the lady's face is like so clear and her body language and her posture or their physical situation is so immediately recognizable. Anyone who's been in a conversation they didn't want to have, or been getting harangued by a little kid they didn't want to pay attention to or been tired and wanted to go to bed is just like, "Yes, of course."
I think that it's a great idea to have honest conversations about children before getting married. I also think it's impossible to promise someone, "What I want right now will never change, and as long as I promise you I do - or don't - want a child - or a specific number of children - before we get married, we will never have to experience fear, anxiety, uncertainty, or the pain of not getting what we want, when we want it.
I'm of the belief that dating "potential" is almost always an exercise in frustration.
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