Quotes by Gina Barreca

If anger were mileage, Id be a very frequent flyer, right up there in First Class.

In short, immaturity is spoiled. And what is spoiled doesn’t ripen. It goes bad early, gets bitter and withers on the vine.

It’s only when you’re at the bottom of the ladder that you ascend.

How about diamonds are a girls best friends? Nope. It should be switched around and pointed out, instead, that your best friends are diamonds.

...there is a celebrated aphorism insisting that the best way to live is to work like you dont need the money, dance like nobody is watching, and love like youve never been hurt....After years of hearing and reading these lines I have decided to tell the truth: the original version is wrong. There is a grave error in the wording of this adage. The correct version should go as follows:Love like you dont need the money,Work like nobody is watching,Dance like youve never been hurt.See? Doesnt that make more sense?

Ask a woman if she’s ambitious and she’ll look at you as if you just asked whether she sticks pins in puppies for fun. Ask a woman if she’s competitive and she’ll look at you as if you suggested that she’s a hooker.

Comics know that time plus pain equals humor and that we can redeem even awful moments from the past by translating them into a shared experience.

To slur “feminism” into “humanism” is to usurp women’s voices once again, to make the singular feminine into the so-called universal masculine.

Boys are rewarded for playing games where they line up by height and then run into walls. Perhaps Im making that up--or perhaps you should do a Google search for Guy Runs into Wall for Fun.Not only do women hold up half the sky; we do it while carrying a 500-pound purse.From age sixteen to age twenty, a womans body is a temple. From twenty-one to forty-five, its an amusement park. From forty-five on, its a terrarium.Bring your sense of humor with you at all times. Bring your friends with a sense of humor. If their friends have a sense of humor, invite them, too

Words can be as irrevocable as an action. They can cut as deeply as a surgeon’s scalpel.

Maturity understands that there’s darkness in the world but that there’s no need to dwell in it: we can lighten up and offer illumination to others.

Until we’re pushing up daisies, it might be good to remind ourselves daily that everything’s coming up roses — for me and for you.

Speaking up is important. Yet to speak up without listening is like banging pots and pans together: Even if it gets you attention, it’s not going to get you respect.

Patriotism is about a desire for progress, not a yearning for repetition.

Never use the passive voice. Do not say, It will get done. Say, Ill do it, and then stick to a solid, unwavering deadline

We all enter this world crying. Laughter is something we have to learn

Its not that diamonds are a girls best friend, but its your best friends who are your diamonds. Its your best friends who are supremely resilient, made under pressure and of astonishing value. Theyre everlasting; they can cut glass if they need to.

Like love, breakfast is best when made at home.

If you believe that your best years are behind you, youve guaranteed they are; Im going to dance into that good night, with the oldies turned up loud.

If you know you can do it - if you can already chart every day in your future - then why bother? Choose to do something you have more trouble imagining. Take a chance.