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Regina Barreca

  • Humor is a show of both strength and of vulnerability: you are willing to make the first move but you are trusting in the response of your listener.

    • Regina Barreca,
    • The Penguin Book of Women's Humor
  • As a kid, you await holidays with a wide-eyed, passionate, almost maniacal enthusiasm. Heavy breathing is involved.

    • Regina Barreca,
    • Too Much of a Good Thing Is Wonderful
  • The search for truth can be compared to a cat chasing her tail: frantic in her pursuit, her quarry nevetheless eludes her; despite the fact that all the world can see it's right there, it remains just beyond her reach. It cannot be possessed because, paradoxically, it is already part of her.

    • Regina Barreca,
    • Too Much of a Good Thing Is Wonderful
  • Truth is like nuclear waste: it needs to be dealt with carefully. Sometimes it needs to be buried way, way out of town. And sometimes it should never be uncovered at all.

    • Regina Barreca,
    • Too Much of a Good Thing Is Wonderful
  • There are two kinds of people in the world: those who like what they like more than they don't like what they don't like and, in contrast, those who don't like what they don't like more than they like what they like.

    • Regina Barreca,
    • Too Much of a Good Thing Is Wonderful
  • Having a lean and hungry look was frowned upon in my Italian neighborhood where a girl was considered too skinny if she could make her knees touch.

    • Regina Barreca,
    • Too Much of a Good Thing Is Wonderful
  • I personally translated the word 'vendetta' as Italian for 'What do you mean, "you want to see other women"?'

    • Regina Barreca,
    • Too Much of a Good Thing Is Wonderful
  • I am constantly surprised that the simple word 'feminism' raises more eyebrows and initiates more sad-faced head-shaking than any elaborate stream of invective I have ever leveled at either the I.R.S. or the D.M.V ...

    • Regina Barreca,
    • Too Much of a Good Thing Is Wonderful
  • Confessions are like tattoos in that 1) You convince yourself that the immediate pain of going through the process means it won't bother you later on; 2) They are permanent.

    • Regina Barreca,
    • Too Much of a Good Thing Is Wonderful
  • The people I work with are like family. I don't mean this in a nice way.

    • Regina Barreca,
    • Too Much of a Good Thing Is Wonderful
  • ... our culture encourages us to confuse 'busy' with 'happy' almost as much as it encourages us to confuse 'busy' with 'successful.'

    • Regina Barreca,
    • Too Much of a Good Thing Is Wonderful
  • ... happiness is more than a tool for survival—at its best moments, it becomes an act of redemption. It allows us to redeem moments that might otherwise have beeen lost to pain or despair ...

    • Regina Barreca,
    • Too Much of a Good Thing Is Wonderful
  • We should remind ourselves that laughing together is as close as you can get to another person without touching, and sometimes it represents a closer tie than touching ever could.

    • Regina Barreca,
    • Too Much of a Good Thing Is Wonderful
  • Anger is the quintessential individual-signature emotion: I am what makes me mad.

    • Regina Barreca,
    • Too Much of a Good Thing Is Wonderful
  • ... however strong the seduction of treating children as adults, it is always a seduction to resist.

    • Regina Barreca,
    • Too Much of a Good Thing Is Wonderful
  • Fear looks both ways but still refuses to cross; fear looks twice and still doesn't leap. ... Fear usually arrives late, inevitably leaves early, and ends up never going out of town at all. Fear is the phantom hand on the back of the neck and the sound of a door opening downstairs when no one is coming home. ... Fear grows poor because it watches others gain wealth but cannot enter the fray; fear grows sick because it eats away at heath even as it fears its diminishment; fear grows old watching others live in ways that seem to threaten—but in reality only enhance—life.

    • Regina Barreca,
    • Too Much of a Good Thing Is Wonderful
  • ... the most important thing in life, without exception, is to step out of the magic circles of safety we create for ourselves. Tapping the same lever to get the same pellet day after day, safe as it is, is for the birds; security isn't the best thing life has to offer and habit dulls both desire and imagination.

    • Regina Barreca,
    • Too Much of a Good Thing Is Wonderful
  • Most cooks would not, for example, prepare an important, elaborate, and difficult dish on the back-burner. Neither should we relegate the cultivation and preparation of happiness for a position where it is both hard to reach and difficult to infuse with new ingredients.

    • Regina Barreca,
    • Too Much of a Good Thing Is Wonderful
  • Interestingly, anger and lust are also elusive states once they have passed. Trying to recall why you were angry about something when you've calmed down is like trying to remember why you were in love with someone who no longer attracts you: the initial impulse triggering the emotion is impossible to recapture.

    • Regina Barreca,
    • Too Much of a Good Thing Is Wonderful
  • ... when life isn't fair to us or to those we love, we get angry. When life is unfair to others, we get philosophical.

    • Regina Barreca,
    • Too Much of a Good Thing Is Wonderful
  • Anger can offer a sense of indignity to replace a sense of shame, and offer a voice—raised above others—which can finally be heard. Those voices are most effective when they are raised in unison, when they have mercy as well as anger behind them, and when, instead of roaring at the anger of old pain, they sing about the glorious possibilities of a future where anger has a smaller house than hope.

    • Regina Barreca,
    • Too Much of a Good Thing Is Wonderful
  • Although fear in the right dosage and under the right circumstance protects us ... imaginary fear offers straitjackets instead of lifejackets, nooses instead of safety nets.

    • Regina Barreca,
    • Too Much of a Good Thing Is Wonderful
  • While I do not believe the earth loaned to us by our ancestors should be plagued by chemical horrors and thereby corrupted for future generations, neither do I believe I should have to face anything that has more eyes than I have during dinner. It was my rule when I was dating and, heck, it's still my rule now.

    • Regina Barreca,
    • Too Much of a Good Thing Is Wonderful

Regina Barreca, U.S. humorist, educator, writer, speaker

(1957)