Nancy Friday Quotes

• When I stopped seeing my mother with the eyes of a child, I saw the woman who helped me give birth to myself.

  Nancy Friday

  Relationship, Mom, Mother Daughter

  66 Copy quote

• The debt of gratitude we owe our mother and father goes forward, not backward. What we owe our parents is the bill presented to us by our children.

  Nancy Friday

  Friday, Mother, Gratitude

  21 Copy quote

• Blaming mother is just a negative way of clinging to her still.

  Nancy Friday

  Friday, Mom, Mother

  10 Copy quote

• Because society would rather we always wore a pretty face, women have been trained to cut off anger.

  Nancy Friday

  Friday, Anger, Cutting

  19 Copy quote

• Sexuality is the great field of battle between biology and society.

  Nancy Friday

  Sex, Battle, Fields

  16 Copy quote

• After sex, men fear too much intimacy; they want to separate again. Women want to talk, to continue the merging, melting fusion into one. Postcoital conversations keep the woman's power alive. Through unconscious severance, by falling asleep, the man regains his self.

  Nancy Friday

  Sex, Fall, Men

  9 Copy quote

• The older I get...the more of my mother I see in myself.

  Nancy Friday

  Friday, Mother, Age

  1977 My Mother, My Self, ch.1.

  13 Copy quote

• No man can be really free in bed with a woman who is not.

  Nancy Friday

  Men, Bed

  9 Copy quote

• All my writing has been an effort to sort out the paradoxes of my life.

  Nancy Friday

  Writing, Effort, Paradox

  10 Copy quote

• Our culture raises us to seek success but we are not taught how to live with it.

  Nancy Friday

  Success, Culture, Taught

  15 Copy quote

• To say something nice about themselves, this is the hardest thing in the world for people to do.

  Nancy Friday

  Nice, People, World

  11 Copy quote

• Oh, I know all about my mother and me,' you may say. 'All that business with my mother was over years ago.' You don't and it wasn't.

  Nancy Friday

  Mother, Years, May

  7 Copy quote

• Do women dress for men or women? I’ve always wondered why that eternally provocative question is put in terms of approval - as if the heart of the matter, the answer, were indeed a question of approval by either sex. But the question is never satisfactorily answered because it is incorrectly posed. It’s disapproval, the fear of it, that motivates most women, and with disapproval it doesn’t matter where it comes from.

  Nancy Friday

  Sex, Heart, Men

  13 Copy quote

• Fantasy isn't something you run out of.

  Nancy Friday

  Running, Fantasy

  9 Copy quote

• Separation is not the end of love; it creates love.

  Nancy Friday

  Long Distance Relationship, Separation, Ends

  12 Copy quote

• I like the company of men. I've never been welcome in those groups, but then I would no more go to a consciousness-raising group and talk about my intimate life with my husband than fly to the moon. I never understood all that.

  Nancy Friday

  Husband, Moon, Men

  8 Copy quote

• If you believe in the maternal instinct and fail at mother love, you fail as a woman. It is a controlling idea that holds us in an iron grip.

  Nancy Friday

  Mother, Believe, Love You

  1977 My Mother, My Self, ch.1.

  54 Copy quote

• When is enough enough? In envy's eyes, enough never is. Somebody else always has something we want.

  Nancy Friday

  Eye, Envy, Want

  11 Copy quote

• I think biologically we are attracted to more than one person, but given society and our needs, monogamy works better.

  Nancy Friday

  Thinking, Needs, Monogamy

  9 Copy quote

• I'm sure it's why I'm such an odd duck in my feminist generation, because I've always been equally fair to men.

  Nancy Friday

  Men, Ducks, Feminist

  12 Copy quote

• Inside every adult male is a denied little boy.

  Nancy Friday

  Friday, Boys, Adults

  Nancy Friday (1980). “Men in Love: Men's Sexual Fantasies: The Triumph of Love Over Rage”

  8 Copy quote

• For instance, in group therapy, I'll have people stand up, show off, give a speech about themselves as though they've just died and have to give a eulogy. Even with this explicit permission - even an order - to say something nice about themselves, this is the hardest thing in the world for people to do. They'd rather take their clothes off.

  Nancy Friday

  Nice, Clothes, Order

  11 Copy quote

• In a baby's first months, the earliest patterns of intimacy or distrust are forever grooved into his soul.

  Nancy Friday

  Baby, Forever, Soul

  8 Copy quote

• Dreams are the expression of the unconscious while we are asleep.

  Nancy Friday

  Dream, Expression, Unconscious

  5 Copy quote

• Spontaneous love admits errors, hesitations and human failings. It can be tested and repaired.

  Nancy Friday

  Errors, Failing, Spontaneous

  8 Copy quote

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