Meghan Daum Quotes

Quotes about:

• Maybe learning how to be out in the big world isn't the epic journey everyone thinks it is. Maybe that's actually the easy part. The hard part is what's right in front of you. The hard part is learning how to hold the title to your very existence, to own not only property, but also your life.

  Meghan Daum

  Epic, Journey, Thinking

  Meghan Daum (2010). “Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House”, p.245, Vintage

  5 Copy quote

• Evan Handler is not only a fine actor, he’s a damn good writer. It’s Only Temporary is wise and funny and as righteously indignant as it is endearingly self-effacing. In what may be a literary first, the book actually left me wanting more.

  Meghan Daum

  Wise, Book, Self

  6 Copy quote

• A lot of the reason I left New York, in addition to being so broke, was that I just felt I was becoming provincial in that way that only New Yorkers are. My points of reference were really insular. They were insular in that fantastic New York way, but they didn't go much beyond that. I didn't have any sense of class and geography, because the economy of New York is so specific. So I definitely had access and exposure to a huge variety of people that I wouldn't have had if I'd stayed in New York - much more so in Nebraska even than in L.A.

  Meghan Daum

  People, Reason, Economy

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• New York is such a special place. It's really intense for people because they live here when they're young. On top of the energy of the city there's a visceral experience a lot of people have because it's a time in their lives where they're just absorbing a lot. Things take on a significance that they might not otherwise.

  Meghan Daum

  New York, Cities, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• The greatest sex toy ever invented may be the telephone. Sometimes there's nothing more erotic than a disembodied voice, no question more tantalizing than a whispered 'What are you wearing?' Especially when you can make up the answer. On the phone your hair always looks great, your legs are always shaved, your worst pair of underwear becomes a silk negligee.

  Meghan Daum

  Sex, Voice, Phones

  11 Copy quote

• I don't keep a diary or a journal. Sometimes I'll send emails to friends and that's a way of recording what I was thinking at any given time. But I've never been a journal keeper. I feel like part of that is because I'm always on deadline. I've been a freelancer my entire career and, at any given time, I have several deadlines for all sorts of things whether it's some magazine piece or ad copywriting or anything. Obviously, people with deadlines keep journals all the time but, for me, the idea of doing more writing is never appealing. It's why I never blog.

  Meghan Daum

  Writing, Thinking, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• What I think is important about essayists, about the essay as opposed to a lot of personal writing is that the material has to be presented in a processed way. I'm just not interested in writing, "Hey, this is what happened to me today." You get to a place that has very little to do with your personal experience and talks about some larger idea or something in the culture. I don't think you can get to that unless you have had a lot of time to gestate and maybe if I was taking a lot of notes while stuff was going on, I wouldn't be able to get to that place as easily.

  Meghan Daum

  Writing, Thinking, Important

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• I had written a lot about my dog dying before. I wrote a newspaper column about it and it turned out to be the most popular column I'd ever written. That and the lame Joni Mitchell column I did. But the dog column, my god! People love dogs. Anybody who writes regularly should know, when in doubt: dogs! If you're a columnist, when in doubt, write a column about the culture of narcissism - like a scolding column about the culture of narcissism - or write something about dogs. That's the homerun in my take.

  Meghan Daum

  Dog, Writing, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• I've always been interested in tht notion of what is authentic and how we define that and why our culture imposes certain emotions and emotional constraints onto experiences.

  Meghan Daum

  Emotional, Culture, Emotion

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• We've never been in a time where mothers - parenthood, but particularly motherhood - is so fetishized.

  Meghan Daum

  Mother, Motherhood, Parenthood

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• The thing about living in a place like Nebraska is there aren't that many people, so your circle of acquaintances is going be much more diverse. Everyone would go to the same bar, like the local politicians and construction workers. The class intersections were fascinating to me. And of course there's a whole other conversation about what a huge source of growth it was for me in terms of understanding people and the world in a way that I hadn't in New York. I used to say that L.A. is essentially New York with yards.

  Meghan Daum

  People, Understanding, Growth

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• I mean, being provincial is a privilege in a way. Also people in New York think everybody interacts because they all take the subway. "Oh, I see all these different people! All these different walks of life on the subway." Well, they're not coming to your dinner party. Certainly, in small-town Nebraska, everyone indeed did mix together.

  Meghan Daum

  Party, Mean, Thinking

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• For me, one of the reasons I love this form - the personal essay form - is because it's a way of forming an intimacy with the reader. What I'm saying to the reader is: I'm going to tell you something; I'm going to be generous; I'm going to offer. The confession, on the other hand, is sort of an imposition because you're asking the reader to forgive you or somehow exonerate you or say, "Hey, I'm even worse." But what I'm interested in doing is being generous and offering a perspective or suggesting a way of thinking about something.

  Meghan Daum

  Thinking, Perspective, Forgiving

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• Being in the entertainment industry in L.A. is the equivalent to being in the publishing industry in New York. You don't ever have to hangout with anybody else.

  Meghan Daum

  Publishing

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• And why the hell should you do a really hard, important job that you don't want to do? That has extremely high stakes? That just blows my mind.

  Meghan Daum

  Blow, Mind, Important

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• I've always been a late bloomer in some ways, and extremely precocious in other ways. When I was twenty I was living in New York and working a job and could barely bother to be a college student and had my own apartment, but I couldn't possibly get married before I was thirty-nine.

  Meghan Daum

  Jobs, New York, College

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• I grew up in a town where there were no adults over forty who weren't somebody's parents. It was, unfortunately, the kind of town that's a "great places to raise kids" - that's basically code for "there are no adults here who are not parents." I had a few teachers who were kind of weirdo drama teachers and were hugely influential.

  Meghan Daum

  Teacher, Drama, Kids

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• I don't understand why it's more socially acceptable to say that you are a shallow person than to just say this is not something you want to do. Especially because it's a really hard job. It's a really important job. And why the hell should you do a really hard, important job that you don't want to do? That has extremely high stakes? That just blows my mind.

  Meghan Daum

  Jobs, Blow, Shallow Person

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• As I've gotten older, I've felt I have more authority on that subject. I think the conversation needs to be reframed. What I hate - a lot of conversations about choosing not to have children tend to be couched in these superficial terms, or kind of glib, "I'd rather have a Porsche" or "I forgot to have kids." No you didn't.

  Meghan Daum

  Children, Hate, Kids

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• In New York the stakes are so high. In urban centers the stakes are so high. You marry the wrong person, you go to the wrong college, you take the wrong job. Any of these things could really get you in trouble down the road. Or in your mind anyway. You're afraid to make any move, it's paralyzing.

  Meghan Daum

  Jobs, New York, Moving

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• We've never been in a time where mothers - parenthood, but particularly motherhood - is so fetishized. There's a whole industry around motherhood and mother-daughter bonds. And certainly when my mother was sick I found there was an incredible expectation for me to tell everybody how we were having this bonding experience and how healing it was.

  Meghan Daum

  Daughter, Mother, Healing

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• There has to be insight born of hindsight. Otherwise, you're only confessing your sins and asking the reader to forgive you. And that is a complete misuse of the writer's power and unfair to the reader.

  Meghan Daum

  Forgiving, Asking, Sin

  "On False Sentimentality, Womanhood, and Getting with the Program: A Conversation with Meghan Daum". Work in Progress interview, fsgworkinprogress.com.

  4 Copy quote

• No matter where they are or who they're with, dogs are incapable of being anything but themselves. Show me a dog that puts on airs or laughs politely at an unfunny joke and I'll show you a human in a dog costume, possibly one owned and licensed by the Walt Disney Company.

  Meghan Daum

  Dog, Air, Laughing

  4 Copy quote

• I am not and will never again be a young writer, a young homeowner, a young teacher. I was never a young wife. The only thing I could do now for which my youth would be a truly notable feature would be to die. If I died now, I'd die young. Everything else, I'm doing middle-aged.

  Meghan Daum

  Teacher, Wife, Young Writers

  Meghan Daum (2014). “The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion”, p.83, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• There may well be a few extremists out there somewhere calling for a militant, women-only utopia, but why should this be the definition of 'feminist' when it's already the definition of 'silly'?

  Meghan Daum

  Silly, Feminist, Definitions

  4 Copy quote

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