Judith Guest > Quotes

“People who keep stiff upper lips find that it's damn hard to smile.”
― Judith Guest, Ordinary People

“Depression is not sobbing and crying and giving vent, it is plain and simple reduction of feeling.”
― Judith Guest

“Feeling is not selective, I keep telling you that. You can’t feel pain, you aren’t gonna feel anything else, either.”
― Judith Guest, Ordinary People

“Depending on the reality one must face, one may prefer to opt for illusion.”
― Judith Guest, Ordinary People

“. . . crazy world or maybe it's just the view we have of it, looking through a crack in the door, never being able to see the whole room, the whole picture.”
― Judith Guest, Ordinary People

“Riding the train gives him too much time to think, he has decided. Too much thinking can ruin you.”
― Judith Guest, Ordinary People

“I keep telling you that feeling is not selective. You can't feel pain, you aren't gonna feel anything else either.”
― Judith Guest

“Life is not a series of pathetic, meaningles actions. Some of them are so far from pathetic, so far from meaningless as to be beyond reason, maybe beyond forgiveness.”
― Judith Guest, Ordinary People

“People have a right to be the way they are.”
― Judith Guest, Ordinary People

“The small seed of despair cracks open and sends experimental tendrils upward to the fragile skin of calm holding him together.”
― Judith Guest, Ordinary People

“And do not be paralyzed. It is better to move than to be unable to move, because you fear loss so much: loss of order, loss of security, loss of predictability.”
― Judith Guest, Ordinary People

“See? Haven't lost your sense of humor after all but your sense of identity is what seems to have been misplaced. No. Wrong. You can't lose what you never had.”
― Judith Guest, Ordinary People

“Happy!” She looks at him. “Oh, Ward! You give us all the definition, will you? But first you’d better check on those kids. Every day, to make sure they’re good and safe, that”
― Judith Guest, Ordinary People

“And what about tomorrow then? And all the tomorrows to come? Why can't we talk about it? Why can't we ever talk about it?”
― Judith Guest, Ordinary People

“He hangs on now, pressing his hand lightly against the wall, below the window, waiting for the familiar arrow of pain. Only there is none. An oddly pleasant swell of memory, a wave of warmth flooding over him, sliding back, slowly. It is a first”
― Judith Guest, Ordinary People

“Fine. We can make it a combination Christmas and birthday present. You decide. I'll leave it up to you".

If it were up to him, he would give him everything: sun and moon, eternal happiness, serene and uncomplicated.”
― Judith Guest, Ordinary People

“To have a reason to get up in the morning, it is necessary to have some kind of guiding principle. A belief of some kind”
― Judith Guest

“Maybe you gotta feel lousy sometime, in order to feel better. A little advice, kiddo, about feeling. Don't think too much about it. And don't expect it always to tickle.”
― Judith Guest, Ordinary People

“He closes his eyes. A jungle in there, inside his head. He opens them quickly.”
― Judith Guest, Ordinary People

“fast. Get those months, days, hours, minutes out of the way, it can’t be quick enough.”
― Judith Guest, Ordinary People

“Choir is the one time of day when he lets down his guard; there is peace in the strict concentration that Faughnan demands of all of them, in the sweet dissonance of voices in chorus. He has sung in here since he was a freshman. Faughnan is a serious student of music; also, a perfectionist of the sternest sort, who cares about nobody, about nothing other than the music. His shirt sleeves rolled to the elbows, his tie undone, he drives them. Every minute of every hour that is spent there, they work, and there is only one way to prove yourself. You sing, and sing, and sing. All else is unimportant.”
― Judith Guest

“Make notes—I’ve lost more material than I’ve ever written. Contrary to popular opinion, it’s not still up there in one’s brain. It’s in outer space and it ain’t coming back.”
― Judith Guest

“It has always been easier to believe himself capable of evil than to accept evil in others.”
― Judith Guest, Ordinary People

“First. I give a damn. About everything you do”
― Judith Guest, Ordinary People

“People use people according to their own needs. Or don't use them. When a primary need is one of safety.”
― Judith Guest, Ordinary People

“He had left off being a perfectionist then, when he discovered that not promptly kept appointments, not a house circumspectly clean, not membership in Onwentsia, or the Lake Forest Golf and Country Club, or the Lawyers' Club, not power, or knowledge, or goodness - not anything - cleared you through the terrifying office of chance; that it is chance and not perfection that rules the world.”
― Judith Guest, Ordinary People

“Everything seems excessive, now, and too intense, too important.”
― Judith Guest, Ordinary People

“Geez, if I could get through to you, kiddo, that depression is not sobbing and crying and giving vent, it is plain and simple reduction of feeling. Reduction, see? Of all feeling. People who keep stiff upper lips find that it's damn hard to smile.”
― Judith Guest, Ordinary People

“He will be eighteen in January, but he looks younger than that, and vulnerable; yet older at the same time. Tired. His face is drawn. He has an urge to shield him, but how? There is no way. No way at all.”
― Judith Guest, Ordinary People

“A little advice about feelings kiddo; don't expect it always to tickle." Dr, Berger”
― Judith Guest