A Quote by Jennifer Egan
What he needed was to find fifty more people like him, who had stopped being themselves without realizing it.
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Before, I had an idea of what I thought I needed to be, and I'm realizing more and more that being yourself is the best thing.
I was raised in Harlem. I never found a book that took place in Harlem. I never had a church like mine in a book. I never had people like the people I knew. People who could not find their lives in books and celebrated felt bad about themselves. I needed to write to include the lives of these young people.
We broke through the feminine mystique and women who were wives, mothers and housewives began to find themselves as people. That didn't mean they stopped, or had to stop, being mothers, wives or even liking their homes.
I was still interested in the youth rebellion but never-the-less I stopped being a victim. Stopped trying to attack the establishment realizing that it takes too much of your energy.
It was by coincidence that I ended up opening my first shop in 1968, and I haven't stopped since. I now find myself trying to do everything. I couldn't live without creating my collections, without writing, drawing and reading. But I couldn't either live without being close to my children on a daily basis and also to my grandchildren, and to all the people I love. I guess I am like every woman today, one who juggles her work and family life.
More than his exterior hit me. I felt warm and safe just being with him. He brought comfort after my terrible day. So often with other people I felt a need to be center of attention, to be funny and always have something clever to say. It was a habit I needed to shake. But with him I never felt like I had to be anything more than what I already was. I didn’t have to entertain him or think up jokes or even flirt. It was enough to just be together, to be so completely comfortable in each other’s presence—we lost all sense of self-consciousness.
I can't imagine pain greater than stepping across the veil and realizing I had not done what I came here to do - or realizing that I had given up my life to little or nothing, only then to find that it was gone. p 3
God, I loved him. I could insist I was okay with just being friends, that I'd find someone else and get over him, but I was fooling myself. There was no getting past this. I loved him, and fifty years from now we could be married to other people, never exchanged so much as a kiss, and I'd still looking into his eyes and know he was the one. He'd always be the one.
Harry looked around; there was Ginny running toward him; she had a hard blazing look in her face as she threw her arms around him. And without thinking, without planning it, without worrying about the fact that fifty people were watching, Harry kissed her. After several long moments, or it might have been half an hour-or possibly several sunlit days- they broke apart.
Because of that she had never had enough energy to be herself, a person who, like everyone else in the world, needed other people in order to be happy. But other people were so difficult. They reacted in unpredictable ways, they surrounded themselves with defensive walls, they behaved just as she did, pretending they didn't care about anything. When someone more open to life appeared, they either rejected them outright or made them suffer, consigning them to being inferior, ingenuous.
He reacted like I slapped him, and I hated hurting him, but I knew he needed to know. “He doesn’t deserve it. He can have any girl in the world’s love, and he took yours. Someone who deserves so much more than a summer fling.” He stood and started to walk away, but stopped and glanced back at me. “If you were mine, I would never let you go.” He left the kitchen.
The more people do hear my music, they do realize that I'm being true to myself. So there is that conflict, but I think more and more, people are realizing I'm just being me.
When I left 'Being Human,' that was painful because the show was going on without me. But with 'Him & Her,' we finished on such a high together that if it is the end, it couldn't have stopped at a better time. But I hope with 'Him & Her' that we'll get another crack of the whip: that the writer might change his mind and write some more.
Yet I'm sure there's something more to be read in a man. People dare not -- they dare not turn the page. The laws of mimicry -- I call them the laws of fear. People are afraid to find themselves alone, and don't find themselves at all. I hate this moral agoraphobia -- it's the worst kind of cowardice. You can't create something without being alone. But who's trying to create here? What seems different in yourself: that's the one rare thing you possess, the one thing which gives each of us his worth; and that's just what we try to suppress. We imitate. And we claim to love life.
She had told him that she loved him. He had known that, but hearing it in the traditional phrase had affected him in new and blinding ways. Ways that made him believe that he could do anything. Anything she needed or wanted him to do. Because her loving him meant so much more than him loving her.
Not a lot of siblings have opportunity [of realizing ourselves and realizing each other], because they're always being pushed together so much. They need their time apart in order to realize themselves and realize who they are.
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