Nobody objects to a woman being a good writer or sculptor or geneticist if at the same time she manages to be a good wife, a good mother, good-looking, good-tempered, well-dressed, well-groomed, and unaggressive. – Marya Mannes
The curse of the romantic is a greed for dreams, an intensity of expectation that, in the end, diminishes the reality. – Marya Mannes
In our society those who are in reality superior in intelligence can be accepted by their fellows only if they pretend they are not. – Marya Mannes
The great omission in American life is solitude; not loneliness, for this is an alienation that thrives most in the midst of crowds, but that zone of time and space, free from the outside pressures, which is the incubator of the spirit. – Marya Mannes