Top 33 Elizabeth Wurtzel Quotes

I am baffled by men. When they want me, I don’t want them; when I want them, they don’t want me.

Women who have it all should try having nothing: I have no husband, no children, no real estate, no stocks, no bonds, no investments, no 401(k), no CDs, no IRAs, no emergency fund – I don’t even have a savings account. It’s not that I have not planned for the future; I have not planned for the present.

I used to feel that I spent too much of my time in my pajamas doing nothing, and I’d think ‘in the time that I don’t spend writing, I could raise a family of five.’ In a lot of ways, being a writer is lonely and alienating.

I believe women who are supported by men are prostitutes; that is that, and I am heartbroken to live through a time where Wall Street money means these women are not treated with due disdain.

I’ll see Naomi Wolf on television periodically, I have nothing against her and what she says, but I’ll feel that she’s a politician, like she’s got an agenda to get across and that she doesn’t always say what’s really true or exactly what she feels.

Judaism will be enmeshed in pride and shame for as long as it endures. But to endure as a country, Israel must shun both these tendencies.

I’d really like to write a book about Timothy McVeigh, but it would only work if he cooperated.

Because trying to see all sides, such an instinct is particularly Jewish.

Everything good takes a great amount of effort. Like, things went wrong with ‘Prozac Nation’ so much, and it went through so many rejections and incarnations, but I felt so much that it needed to exist. But if I hadn’t been so persistent and insistent, it wouldn’t have happened.

Age is a terrible avenger. The lessons of life give you so much to work with, but by the time you’ve got all this great wisdom, you don’t get to be young anymore.

That’s the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it’s impossible to ever see the end. The fog is like a cage without a key.

I thought depression was the part of my character that made me worthwhile. I thought so little of myself, felt that I had such scant offerings to give to the world, that the one thing that justified my existence at all was my agony.

I always knew I was a writer. And I always thought to myself, ‘Well, why not me?’ Someone has to be on the best-seller list, ‘Why not me?’ Someone has to write for the ‘New Yorker,’ ‘Why not me?’ And I didn’t really get much positive reinforcement as a kid, so I thought, ‘Well let me show you what I can do.’

It’s like Samson and Delilah: watch your back, because trouble could be the person you’re sleeping with.

Israel fights back, which is very much at odds with the Jewish instinct to discuss and deconstruct everything until action itself seems senseless.

I did not have a mobile phone in 1993. No one did, except the occasional banker or Hollywood star seeming smart, or the main character in ‘American Psycho.’ In 1993, every day was ‘let’s get lost.’ I could walk Greenwich Village for hours and not be found.

I am motivated to write because it is what I am meant to do. It is not a choice – it is what I am. I did not choose writing – it chose me. And I believe it is necessarily that way. Anyone doing this for some other reason should not be.

I start to think there really is no cure for depression, that happiness is an ongoing battle, and I wonder if it isn’t one I’ll have to fight for as long as I live. I wonder if it’s worth it.

Yes, the United States is still the great meritocracy it’s always been; but now, if you aren’t brilliant or beautiful or both, there isn’t much to do, because they can do it cheaper in Shanghai or Mumbai.

I’m a huge Springsteen fan, and yet if either he or Bob Dylan had to be erased from the world’s hard drive, I would save Bob Dylan’s work for sure – he’s the greater talent, and by leaps and bounds and skyscrapers and rocket blasts. But Bob Dylan is an alien to his public.

In a strange way, I had fallen in love with my depression.

The American Dream, coupled with government subsidies of utilities and cheap consumer goods courtesy of slave labour somewhere else, has kept the poor huddled masses from rising up.

As it is my good fortune to be American, I live in the only country that as a matter of policy is pro-Israel regardless of party allegiance; Democrats and Republicans equally unite behind the blue-and-white.

The men have piled up in my past, have fallen trenchantly through my life, like an avalanche that doesn’t mean to kill but is going to bury me alive just the same.

People who think that Sylvia Plath was a poor, sensitive poet are not getting that she had great amounts of ambition and anger that moved her along, or she wouldn’t have been able to fight against that depression to produce such an incredible body of work by the age of thirty.

Like everyone, I was a huge fan of David Boies, and from what I knew about him, I thought he might ‘get’ me. So I sent him an email. I said I want to practice law but that I didn’t want to stop writing and I asked if there was any way I could practice law for him.

Insanity is knowing that what you’re doing is completely idiotic, but still, somehow, you just can’t stop it.

I was meant to date the captain of the football team, I was going to be on a romantic excursion every Saturday night, I was destined to be collecting corsages from every boy in town before prom, accepting such floral offerings like competing sacrifices to a Delphic goddess.

Sometimes I wish that there were a way to let people know that just because I live in a world without rules, and in a life that is lawless, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt so bad the morning after.

Sometimes I think that I was forced to withdraw into depression because it was the only rightful protest I could throw in the face of a world that said it was alright for people to come and go as they please, that there were simply no real obligations left.

I always carry lots of stuff with me wherever I roam, always weighted down with books, with cassettes, with pens and paper, just in case I get the urge to sit down somewhere, and oh, I don’t know, read something or write my masterpiece.

It was just very interesting to me that certain types of women inspire people’s imagination, and all of them were very difficult women.

My life’s actually been quite dull; it’s not all that glamorous.