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The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Gail Sheehy Quotes

It is a paradox that as we reach out prime, we also see there is a place where it finishes.

– Gail Sheehy

The dream for many millennial women is to make a difference as social or political entrepreneurs. They are using the social media and marketing tools they have mastered to empower less fortunate women and direct them onto career tracks that women have traditionally avoided, like science and technology.

– Gail Sheehy

If you’re the person living closest to the parent who’s going to need help, and you take on the whole role of primary caregiver, you can be pretty sure your sibling who lives farthest away is going to call you and say, ‘You don’t know what you’re doing.’ Because they’re not on the spot, and they probably feel guilty.

– Gail Sheehy

In the case of my husband, we found that facing a life-threatening illness prodded us to make a dramatic change in our lives.

– Gail Sheehy

Over the next few years the boardrooms of America are going to light up with hot flashes.

– Gail Sheehy

When I was immobilized by fear, I might have a panic attack. I’ve had a couple of panic attacks in my life.

– Gail Sheehy

No one can control the aging process or the trajectory of illness.

– Gail Sheehy

Changes are not only possible and predictable, but to deny them is to be an accomplice to one’s own unnecessary vegetation.

– Gail Sheehy

Character is what was yesterday and will be tomorrow.

– Gail Sheehy

I do think women can have it all – but not all women. If you take daring steps and are smart about it, you can probably have it all. But you might have to wait a while.

– Gail Sheehy

Most women have learned a great deal about how to set goals for our First Adulthood and how to roll with the punches when we hit a rough passage. But we’re less prepared for our Second Adulthood as we approach life after retirement, where there are no fixed entrances or exits, and lots of sand into which it is easy to bury our heads.

– Gail Sheehy

I found the happiest woman in America is between 50 and 55, is happily married, has made significant progress in her career, and lives in a community where she can easily exercise outside. But the most important single thing was she had her last child before she was 35.

– Gail Sheehy

Like everyone else in the first weeks after the tragedy of 9/11, I was looking frantically for some way to help.

– Gail Sheehy

I do think taking the 20s to take the most chances you can is important, because you’re not going to hurt anyone else during that time. And if you do have a partner, you need a couple years to rehearse that relationship.

– Gail Sheehy

This is something caregivers have to understand: You have to ask for help. You have to realize that you deserve to ask for help. Because you need to keep on working on your own life.

– Gail Sheehy

Creativity can be described as letting go of certainties.

– Gail Sheehy

In my memoir, I admit that I’ve been as fearful of success as of failure. In fact, when ‘Passages’ was published, I so dreaded bad reviews that I ran away to Italy with a girlfriend and our children to hide out.

– Gail Sheehy

I’d visually have that idea. I’m diving off the end of the diving board. I’m not going to be worried about if I’m going to dive into a jellyfish or the water’s going to be too cold or the boys are going to beat me. I’m just doing it. And if I do it, it’s a good chance I’ll make it.

– Gail Sheehy

It was so naive to think that there was nothing interesting that happened after 55. Come on, there’s a whole second adulthood!

– Gail Sheehy

If every day is an awakening, you will never grow old. You will just keep growing.

– Gail Sheehy

It was my very good fortune to find a mentor, Clay Felker, who started my career at the ‘New York Magazine’ as a freelance writer when I had to quit my job at the ‘Herald Tribune’ to stay home with my young daughter.

– Gail Sheehy

No sooner do we think we have assembled a comfortable life than we find a piece of ourselves that has no place to fit in.

– Gail Sheehy

If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we aren’t really living.

– Gail Sheehy

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter into another!

– Gail Sheehy

Being a pathfinder is to be willing to risk failure and still go on.

– Gail Sheehy

I know I’m never going to probably see the Taj Mahal or, you know, climb Mt. Everest, but I can still maybe influence peoples’ way of thinking by a story that I do, by something I learn about the world.

– Gail Sheehy

We really only have two choices. Play it safe, or take a chance. For me, pulling back because of fear has always made me feel worse.

– Gail Sheehy

People in grief need someone to walk with them without judging them.

– Gail Sheehy

The secret of a leader lies in the tests he has faced over the whole course of his life and the habit of action he develops in meeting those tests.

– Gail Sheehy

The delights of self-discovery are always available.

– Gail Sheehy

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