At last month's True Story: Non-Fiction at KGB Bar, famed essayist, journalist and critic Vivian Gornick talked about womanhood, working and life as a woman worker. KGB curator Erin Edmison introduced the night with a story of how she came to first read Gornick's work.

Bon Mots

Gornick on making work her priority: "The only important thing, I told myself, was work. I must teach myself to work. If I worked, I'd have what I needed. I'd be a person in the world. What would it matter, then, that I was giving up love? As it turned out, it mattered." 

Gornick on her sacrifices for work: "I love my hardened heart. I've loved it all these years. But the loss of romantic love can still tear at it."

Gornick on her place in the working world: "Clearly what I have here is—what I've lived on and with and all the rest of it—is what's called an elitist preoccupation. The whole world of ungratifying work, of mechanical work, of work that is drudgery still exists."

True Story: The Non-Fiction Reading Series at KGB returns in the spring. Visit their Facebook page for more information.