Joyce Maynard Quotes & Sayings

If people choose to live their life in a way that does not confront the more troubling aspects of their experience, that's fine, if it works for them. But it will probably make them uncomfortable if they come up against somebody like me. So they just shouldn't! They shouldn't read my work! — Joyce Maynard

Not only did I avoid speaking of Salinger; I resisted thinking about him. I did not reread his letters to me. The experience had been too painful. — Joyce Maynard

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. — Joyce Maynard

For a parent, it's hard to recognize the significance of your work when you're immersed in the mundane details. Few of us, as we run the bath water or spread the peanut butter on the bread, proclaim proudly, "I'm making my contribution to the future of the planet." But with the exception of global hunger, few jobs in the world of paychecks and promotions compare in significance to the job of parent. — Joyce Maynard

There is something about the act of studying an unclothed body, as an artist does, that allows a person to appreciate it as pure form, regardless of the kinds of traits traditionally regarded as imperfections. In a figure drawing class, an obese woman's folds of flesh take on a kind of beauty. You can look at a man's shrunken chest or legs or buttocks with tenderness. Age is not ugly, just poignant. — Joyce Maynard

A lot of your problem was in your head. You see yourself screwing up, it's going to happen. — Joyce Maynard

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

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. — Joyce Maynard

My mother didn't believe in germs but I did. Germs are something they made up to distract people from what they should really be worried about, she said. Germs are natural. It's the things people do you have to worry about. — Joyce Maynard

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. — Joyce Maynard

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

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

Women writers have been told, forever, that our stories were not valuable. Not as valuable as men's stories about wars, business, power. — Joyce Maynard

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. — Joyce Maynard

It troubles me that people speak about writing for money as ugly and distasteful. — Joyce Maynard

Love doesn't come and go when it's real. Love is supposed to be constant. — Joyce Maynard

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. — Joyce Maynard

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. — Joyce Maynard

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. — Joyce Maynard

One life is not enough for me. I want to go lots of places. — Joyce Maynard

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

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

I tried to think of what my father would tell me. 'Don't let any boy give you shit.' But he'd never said how we should go about preventing this. — Joyce Maynard

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. — Joyce Maynard

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. — Joyce Maynard

For 25 years, I did take my responsibilities as a pleaser of others sufficiently seriously. — Joyce Maynard

There was a way of looking at the world where practically every single thing that happened had some kind of double meaning. — Joyce Maynard

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. — Joyce Maynard

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

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

Some family's boat capsized at Lake Winnipesaukee the day before and now they were looking for the father's body. — Joyce Maynard

The real drug, I came to believe, was love. — Joyce Maynard

She never gave up adoring our father, but he ceased to be, for her, the larger-than-life hero I continued to make him into. For Patty, he was more like a deeply lovable spaniel who keeps peeing on the rug and chewing on the upholstery, no matter how many times you tell him not to. — Joyce Maynard

I was giving a speech one time, and the woman who introduced me said, 'Well, she used to be J. D. Salinger's girlfriend. I thought, 'God, is that all I've been?' I didn't want to be reduced to that. — Joyce Maynard

A good home must be made, not bought. — Joyce Maynard

It was as if I'd been in the middle of a book that I had to put down when I got too tired to keep reading, or a video put on pause. I wanted to pick back up with the story and find out what happened to the characters, except that the characters were us. — Joyce Maynard

It's like life: sometimes the littlest thing turns out to be the most important. — Joyce Maynard

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

Ten years from now, her mother might not even recognize her. Already she was different, but the day would come when she'd be this person her mother had never seen. There would be other people - someone like Carolyn or Alan, or even Violet - who had known her longer than her mother ever did. — Joyce Maynard

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. — Joyce Maynard

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

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

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. — Joyce Maynard

The process of writing has always started for me when I put myself in a place where no one distracts me. — Joyce Maynard

I wonder what it is that the people who criticize me for telling this story truly object to: is it that I have dared to tell the story? Or that the story turns out not to be the one they wanted to hear? — Joyce Maynard

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. — Joyce Maynard

I've had some wonderful successes and some extreme disappointments in my career and my life. — Joyce Maynard

You like to think you can count on a person. To hang around — Joyce Maynard

She was in love with love. — Joyce Maynard

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

Although Salinger had long since cut me out of his life completely and made it plain that he had nothing but contempt for me, the thought of becoming the object of his wrath was more than I felt ready to take on. — Joyce Maynard

No doubt Richard's father, like my mother, had once held his infant son in his arms, looked into the eyes of his child's mother, and believed they would move into the future together with love. The fact that they didn't was a weight each of us carried, as every child does, probably, whose parents no longer live under the same roof. Wherever it is you make your home, there is always this other place, this other person, calling to you. Come to me. Come back. — Joyce Maynard

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? — Joyce Maynard

Daughters," he told her as they dug. "Nothing better than a good daughter. — Joyce Maynard

Tragedy and death would follow a person whereever he went in life. There was no such thing as escape, except maybe the kind that Mr. Kirby had accomplished ... — Joyce Maynard

A person who deserves my loyalty receives it. — Joyce Maynard

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. — Joyce Maynard

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

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. — Joyce Maynard

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) — Joyce Maynard

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

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

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. — Joyce Maynard

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 — Joyce Maynard

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. — Joyce Maynard

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

I continued to protect him with my silence. — Joyce Maynard

You write about what you know, and you write about what you want to know. — Joyce Maynard

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. — Joyce Maynard

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

Weary soldiers who went through a war together, side by — Joyce Maynard

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. — Joyce Maynard

If you act like something's too hard, it will be, he said. You got to believe it's possible. — Joyce Maynard

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. — Joyce Maynard

It is not the task of a reader to please her subjects. — Joyce Maynard

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

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

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. — Joyce Maynard

Teach a child to play solitaire, and she'll be able to entertain herself when there's no one around. Teach her tennis, and she'll know what to do when she's on a court. But raise her to feel comfortable in nature, and the whole planet is her home. — Joyce Maynard

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

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. — Joyce Maynard