Emily Yoffe Quotes

#1. Sometimes people back themselves into corners where they think they have to make kind of an engraved-in-stone decision.

Emily Yoffe

#2. The biggest problem is that people want to tell the whole story, and they write letters that are way longer than anything I could possibly run.

Emily Yoffe

#3. Keep in mind that when you tell people to come see you, they might not get the idea about when it's time to leave.

Emily Yoffe

#4. As Winston Churchill said, "Dogs look up to you, Cats look down on you." It's just that I discovered that being looked at from both of those perspectives is where I want to be.

Emily Yoffe

#5. When you have a life milestone happen, it's good to step back and reassess the things you thought you knew about yourself.

Emily Yoffe

#6. Not many people could juggle graduate school and two jobs.

Emily Yoffe

#7. Accept the fact that life presents us with opportunities to find more than one "one," and that you have learned a mighty life lesson when the next one comes along.

Emily Yoffe

#8. I try to direct people in distress to the right resources, where they can get comprehensive help. I've heard from many people that simply putting down in a letter what is going on in their lives is therapeutic in and of itself.

Emily Yoffe

#9. There are some people who do not have a wild past because being wild would make them terribly self-conscious and uncomfortable.

Emily Yoffe

#10. The human heart is a mysterious and sometimes dark place.

Emily Yoffe

#11. When you expand the definition of marriage beyond one man and one woman, society can expect other consenting adults in other configurations to say that their choices deserve recognition.

Emily Yoffe

#12. Never loan money to friends or family that you are not able to write off entirely.

Emily Yoffe

#13. I have people close to me who ask my advice just as I ask theirs.

Emily Yoffe

#14. I have this wonderful capacity just to walk away from my mistakes and not dwell on them.

Emily Yoffe

#15. You can't get a guarantee from everyone who appears in personal photographs that they will forever remain warm presences in one's life or sweet memories.

Emily Yoffe

#16. Most women at some point or many points in their lives will have to deal with an unwanted advance and having the confidence to be "rude" and say no is an important skill to develop.

Emily Yoffe

#17. I agree that not responding, and blocking his email, is the way to deal with the man you hope falls silent again.

Emily Yoffe

#18. Once an affair is over, the cheaters need to agree not to see each other anymore in order to reestablish trust with their spouses.

Emily Yoffe

#19. When my daughter left for college, I lost my in-house consultant to youth culture. There's just stuff I don't get. And there's something kind of pathetic about someone my age trying to pretend she gets it, so I don't try to pretend.

Emily Yoffe

#20. I hate a messy kitchen and my more casual husband has come to recognize it's more pleasant for him to clean up after himself rather than deal with me hating a messy kitchen.

Emily Yoffe

#21. As far as types preferring other types, people of the same type can understand each others' perspective very well, but also drive each other crazy because they see their flaws magnified.

Emily Yoffe

#22. Anyone who marries gets no guarantee that their partner, no matter what they vow, will always keep that promise.

Emily Yoffe

#23. Interfering, judgmental, and disrespectful mothers-in-law are common complaints.

Emily Yoffe

#24. My inbox [showed me] how much pain there is in the world. I appreciated hearing from people, but it was hard to know I couldn't do anything.

Emily Yoffe

#25. When people are really drunk they have a propensity to harm themselves and others - they fall off buildings, they drive into other cars.

Emily Yoffe

#26. I do feel haunted by some of the letters and the suffering people have endured. But I keep in mind that the people who write to me know that I am a journalist and an on-line advice columnist, not a social service professional.

Emily Yoffe

#27. I'm not suffering from some division of personality.

Emily Yoffe

#28. I am against lying, but just because someone asks a question does not mean you have to answer it.

Emily Yoffe

#29. Polygamy has an ancient history and is legal in many parts of the world. I find the rules of polygamy to be damaging and it's potentially dangerous to young girls and terrible for "excess" boys. But polyamory is supposed to be a more equal arrangement among agreeing adults.

Emily Yoffe

#30. I know this is awkward, but when you laugh after almost everything you say, it ends up undermining you.

Emily Yoffe

#31. It's just not right to make an innocent child suffer because of the father's misdeeds.

Emily Yoffe

#32. Insecurity is a toxin and confidence is a tonic, so make the choice not to dwell on the worst possible case.

Emily Yoffe

#33. I've never gotten a letter where I thought I knew the person. But I have heard from people who think they know the letter writer.

Emily Yoffe

#34. The sadness from reading letters that you know you can't help because it's a person who's in extremis and their problems are not soluble by an advice column.

Emily Yoffe

#35. Extreme picky eaters may have what's called Selective Eating Disorder. People with this experience physical and psychological discomfort over certain tastes, smells, textures.

Emily Yoffe

#36. Each week I am forced to revise my original opinion that Facebook is a great innovation for keeping people in touch, to believing that it is merely a canvas for members to act out strange, unresolved conflicts and desires.

Emily Yoffe

#37. When you're dealing with an in-law violation, I think the first line of defense is for the blood relation to have a serious talk.

Emily Yoffe

#38. Sometimes people have a wild past because they have an essentially wild nature, and that's how they plan to go through life. Sometimes such people settle into happy monogamy, and can be content there because they never have to wonder, "What did I miss?"

Emily Yoffe

#39. If you think a caregiver has an active substance abuse problem, that person should never be entrusted with your child.

Emily Yoffe

#40. Children need adult men in their lives.

Emily Yoffe

#41. An alcoholic 47-year-old woman with teenagers who thinks a guy in his mid-20s is a good prospect as a partner definitely has some judgment and character flaws.

Emily Yoffe

#42. Obama's major accomplishment is himself. This can be an effective argument to make to undecided voters and something Obama has to artfully address.

Emily Yoffe

#43. If you didn't want to be written about, you shouldn't have been born to a writer!

Emily Yoffe

#44. Don't underestimate the power of the nonplussed look and the shake of the head. Letting noxious words hang in the air can be very powerful.

Emily Yoffe

#45. I'm wondering how someone who goes around wearing a wedding ring succeeded in the dating pool. Normally a wedding ring sends a flashing "Do Not Enter" message - except to those looking for flings with married people.

Emily Yoffe

#46. You may think you're married to a woman, but she's really an overgrown child.

Emily Yoffe

#47. I'm certainly not suggesting legalization of polyamory. But it's also unfairly judgmental of you to compare such relationships to the criminal acts of bestiality or child sexual abuse.

Emily Yoffe

#48. The world's full of victims and the world's full of terrible perpetrators and I want them identified and caught.

Emily Yoffe

#49. I'm not a big advocate of living together before marriage. It can be the right thing, but it can also leave two people stuck together who haven't figured out what they really want out of the relationship.

Emily Yoffe

#50. If you look at books that describe the 16 personality types, you can see how different they are from each other.

Emily Yoffe

#51. I understand polyamory is different from polygamy, and doesn't share the latter's rigid and noxious views that men run the show and are the only ones allowed multiple partners.

Emily Yoffe