Joyce Maynard Quotes

When people ask what I write about, that's what I tell them: 'The drama of human relationships.' I'm not even close to running out of material.

There is a theme that runs through my work, and that is: the toxic property of keeping secrets.

When I was 12 years old, I read Nancy Drew mysteries and biographies of Madame Curie and Florence Nightingale and books about girls who love horses or go to nursing school. I belonged to the Girl Scouts and got A's in school and rarely disobeyed my parents. I still kept a collection of Barbie dolls in my room, and I almost never spoke to boys.

I have no doubt that over the years my children will find plenty of things about me to criticize. But something tells me that twenty years from now not one of them will sit on some therapist's couch complaining because their mother didn't spend enough time vacuuming up glitter.

Nothing like being visible, publishing one's work, and speaking openly about one's life, to disabuse the world of the illusion of one's perfection and purity.

No, I said. I didn't remember that. There was so much to remember, sometimes the best thing was to forget.

The big dramas that fascinate me are the quiet ones that happen behind closed doors in so-called ordinary families.

More than any other setting - more than battlefields or boardrooms or a spaceship headed for intergalactic travel - I'll put my money on the family to provide an endless source of comedy, tragedy and intrigue.

Imagine if you succeeded in making the world perfect for your children what a shock the rest of life would be for them.

A good home must be made, not bought. In the end, it's not track lighting or a sun room that brings light into a kitchen.

Before I had children I always wondered whether their births would be, for me, like the ultimate in gym class failures. And I discovered instead... that I'd finally found my sport.

As for me, I've chosen to follow a simple course: Come clean. And wherever possible, live your life in a way that won't leave you tempted to lie. Failing that, I'd rather be disliked for who I truly am than loved for who I am not. So, I tell my story. I write it down. I even publish it. Sometimes this is a humbling experience. Sometimes it's embarrassing. But I haul around no terrible secrets.

I'd known enough flush times and lean ones to understand that money came and went. And that one day I'd also lose my looks, my seemingly boundless energy and maybe the ability to catch the eye of an attractive man and the audacity to Rollerblade. My name would be forgotten. So would bad reviews, and good ones. But loving a child is something that lasts. Long after all the rest is gone, that's what endures.

It's a great thing when a man knows how to dance, she said. When a man can dance, the world is his oyster." Adele, Henry's Mother

Every child, woman, and man should possess license to speak or sing in his or her true voice.

The portrait of my parents is a complicated one, but lovingly drawn.

It's sad but true that if you focus your attention on housework and meal preparation and diapers, raising children does start to look like drudgery pretty quickly. On the other hand, if you see yourself as nothing less than your child's nurturer, role model, teacher, spiritual guide, and mentor, your days take on a very different cast.

You lay your hand against his skin and just rib his back. Blow into his ear. Press that baby up against your own skin and walk outside with him, where the night air will sourround him, and moonlight fall on his face. Whistle, maybe. Dance. Hum. Pray. (how to calm a crying baby)

Some literary types subscribe to the notion that being a writer like Salinger entitles a person to remain free of the standards that might apply to mere mortals.

I continued to protect him with my silence.

At Home in the World is the story of a young woman, raised in some difficult circumstances, and how she survives. It tells a story of redemption, not victimhood.

Long after Salinger sent me away, I continued to believe his standards and expectations were the best ones.

A good home must be made, not bought.

A person who deserves my loyalty receives it.

My job is writing. I get paid to do it. When was the last time you heard someone challenge a doctor for making money off of cancer?

I had known there had been a serial killer on Mount Tamalpais, and it felt so incongruous in such a beautiful, peaceful spot.

The painter who feels obligated to depict his subjects as uniformly beautiful or handsome and without flaws will fall short of making art.

I believe every one of us possesses a fundamental right to tell our own story.

I do not outline. There are writers I know and count as my friends who certainly do it the other way but for me part of the adventure is not knowing how it's going to turn out.

In the event of an oxygen shortage on airplanes, mothers of young children are always reminded to put on their own oxygen mask first, to better assist the children with theirs. The same tactic is necessary on terra firma. There's no way of sustaining our children if we don't first rescue ourselves. I don't call that selfish behavior. I call it love.

I believed my story would be helpful to young women my daughter's age, who are still in the process of forming themselves as women, and in need of encouragement to remain true to themselves.

It's not only children who grow. Parents do too.

If a man wishes to truly not be written about, he would do well not to write letters to 18-year-old girls, inviting them into his life.

She felt everything too deeply, it was like the world was too much for her.

I compromised my ability to tell my story, at the most basic level.

Growing up in the fifties and sixties, I can only remember knowing one child, ever, whose parents got a divorce, and hardly any whose mother "worked" at anything besides raising her children.

One of the sad realities of being a parent is that the same stuff you know is exciting, educational, and enriching in your child'slife is often messy, smelly and exhausting to deal with.

If I told you about all the stories I don't tell, I would be violating the very boundaries I set for myself.

The silence was part of the story I wanted to tell.

I have long observed that the act of writing is viewed, by some, as an elite and otherworldly act, all the more so if a person isn't paid for what she writes.

The vehemence with which certain critics have chosen not simply to criticize what I've written, but to challenge my writing this story at all, speaks of what the book is about: fear of disapproval.

The word NO, carries a lot more meaning when spoken by a parent who also knows how to say yes.

[On home births:] In a house where there had been three people, there were now four, although no one had come in the door.

It's not only children who grow. Parents do too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours. I can't tell my children to reach for the sun. All I can do is reach for it, myself.

Those who rhapsodize about the ease and joy of childhood have perhaps forgotten what it's like to be 12 years old.

I think of myself as a realistic writer, not a creator of soap opera or melodrama.

Many women my age have known the experience of giving up crucial parts of themselves to please the man they love.

To share our stories is not only a worthwhile endeavor for the storyteller, but for those who hear our stories and feel less alone because of it.