Ayelet Quotes & Sayings

The only difference between a writer and someone who wants to be a writer is discipline. — Ayelet Waldman

Even if the dramatic scenes are really hard, if you're happy with what you have and it's been creative and you had a good time with the people you worked with, that's a good day. — Ayelet Zurer

How many people will die, have died, because of the wasted talents of intelligent and gifted women, forced into domestic drudgery, corseted by paternal demands, strangled by denial of opportunity? — Ayelet Waldman

I do tend to like movies that challenge me professionally. That's mostly on a smaller scale, when you have one or two or five actors, and it's all about the acting and not the camera. — Ayelet Zurer

Courage is impulsive; it is narcissism tempered with nihilism. — Ayelet Waldman

Love & Marriage are about work & Compromise. They're about seeing someone for what he is, being disappointed and deciding to stick around anyway. They're about commitment and comfort, not some kind of sudden, hysterical recognition. — Ayelet Waldman

If I get lucky and I can choose, I would always choose a really good story and screenplay, even if I don't know the director. If there's a good screenplay, there's a chance that something good is going to happen. — Ayelet Zurer

The stereotypical gay man is someone whose company I enjoy, someone who makes me laugh, someone I'd want my kid to be. The stereotypical gay woman makes me insecure, conscious of my failings as a feminist. — Ayelet Waldman

The economy in Gaza is declining because Gaza is controlled by a terror regime. — Ayelet Shaked

I am saying that I am trying to minimize the donations to these groups by talking to diplomats. The transparency bill also has the purpose of enabling the Israeli public and members of Knesset to know whose interests certain organizations represent. — Ayelet Shaked

You can take the babushka off the Jewish mother and dress her up in a pair of Seven jeans and Marc Jacobs sling-backs, but she's still going to expect a passel of grandkids. — Ayelet Waldman

By presenting a faithful and honest record of my experience as a mother, I hope to show both my readers and my children how truth can redeem even what you fear might be the gravest of sins. — Ayelet Waldman

They have to die and their houses should be demolished so that they cannot bear any more terrorists ... are all our enemies and their blood should be on our hands. This also applies to the mothers of the dead terrorists. — Ayelet Shaked

If there's a good screenplay, there's a chance that something good is going to happen. If you don't have a brilliant screenplay, then you either have amazing actors who give you the chance to improve whatever is on the page, or an interesting director who has enough faith in the project that they can carry it through and get it somewhere. — Ayelet Zurer

At issue here is a basic law which enables the Supreme Court to quash laws in extreme cases. Up until now, this right of the Supreme Court was not mentioned anywhere, but was just taken. At the same time, we want to enable the Knesset to overrule decisions of the Supreme Court. — Ayelet Shaked

Gym class was, of course, where the strongest, best-looking kids were made captains and chose us spazzes last. More important, it was where the figures of supposed authority allowed them to do so. Forget the work our parents did molding our minds and values. Everything fell apart as soon as we put on those maroon polyester gym suits. — Ayelet Waldman

If a good mother is one who loves her child more than anyone else in the world, I am not a good mother. I am in fact a bad mother. I love my husband more than I love my children. — Ayelet Waldman

Because of my bipolar disorder, I tend to these mixed states, which are depressed but loud and agitated. So I can be terribly irritable. I go to cognitive behavioral therapy in order not to yell at my children. — Ayelet Waldman

My first therapist was a psychiatric resident assigned to me by University Health Services when I was a third-year law student. I was looking for help dealing with a breakup that at the time felt tragic but that now seems like that moment when you look up from your phone just in time to avoid being plowed down by a city bus. — Ayelet Waldman

I've sometimes thought that it's only by recalling that desperate devotion my kids once felt for me that I can maintain my own desperate devotion in the face of their adolescent sneering. — Ayelet Waldman

I learned that I suffered from bipolar II disorder, a less serious variant of bipolar I, which was once known as manic depression. The information was naturally frightening; up to 1 in 5 people with bipolar disorder will commit suicide, and rates may even be higher for those suffering from bipolar II. — Ayelet Waldman

As a parent, the only thing I am absolutely certain of is my own fallibility. — Ayelet Waldman

Why doesn't anyone address the substantive question of why other states blatantly interfere in Israel's internal affairs? Israel does not meddle in the affairs of other states in a similar way, so why do other countries feel entitled to do this to Israel? These actions violate Israeli sovereignty and I expect European Union member states to act differently. — Ayelet Shaked

When we choose to have an abortion, we must do so understanding the full ramifications of what we are doing. Anything less feels to me to be hypocritical, a selfish abnegation of reality and responsibility. — Ayelet Waldman

My new novel 'Red Hook Road' began many years ago as a short article in the newspaper. — Ayelet Waldman

We [Israel] already have two very strong democratic tools - the two basic laws of personal liberties and human rights. I think we should also provide the judiciary with another tool so that they can rely on the fact that Israel is a Jewish state in verdicts. — Ayelet Shaked

I was born in Israel, to Canadian parents. My father immigrated in 1948, part of a wave of young men and women who came as pioneers, to fight for a Jewish homeland. Their motive was in large part a reaction to the Holocaust, and their slogan was 'Never Again.' — Ayelet Waldman

I pity the young woman who will attempt to insinuate herself between my mama's boy and me. I sympathize with the monumental nature of her task. It will take a crowbar, two bulldozers and half a dozen Molotov cocktails to pry my Oedipus and me loose from one another. — Ayelet Waldman

During the periods in my marriage when I chose to stay home with my kids rather than work as an attorney, it caused me no end of anxiety. Despite the fact that I knew I was contributing to our family by caring for our children, I still felt that my worth was less because I wasn't earning. — Ayelet Waldman

I went from resenting my mother-in-law to accepting her, finally to appreciating her. What appeared to be her diffidence when I was first married, I now value as serenity. — Ayelet Waldman

The Q I loathe and despise, the Q every single writer I know loathes and despises, is this one: 'Where,' the reader asks, 'do you get your ideas?' It's a simple question, and my usual response is a kind of helpless, 'I don't know.' — Ayelet Waldman

Jewish communities in the diaspora are very important to Israel and we are open to a dialogue with them. It is bitter for us to see the process of assimilation, the mixing of Jewish and non-Jewish. But when it comes to the relations of state and religions, the basics have not changed since Rabin's times. — Ayelet Shaked

I expend far too much of my maternal energies on guilt and regret. — Ayelet Waldman

By the time the children go to bed, I am as drained as any mother who has spent her day working, car pooling, building Lego castles and shopping for the precisely correct soccer cleat. — Ayelet Waldman

I think there are many ways to raise great kids. From what I can tell, Ayelet Waldman's kids are interesting, strong, and happy, and if that's the case, that's good parenting. — Amy Chua

I have made so many mistakes as a mother. But the one thing that I know I do is I make sure my children know how much I love them and they are absolutely secure in that. — Ayelet Waldman

In a perfect world, probably we'd never yell, we'd just be firm and dispassionate. But of course, everyone yells at their children. — Ayelet Waldman

Everyone knows now how early a fetus becomes a baby. Women who have been pregnant have seen their babies on ultrasounds. They know that there is a terrible truth to those horrific pictures the anti-choice fanatics hold up in front of abortion clinics. — Ayelet Waldman

I have two daughters and I have done everything in my power to prevent them from assimilating, even being aware of, my idiocy about my weight. — Ayelet Waldman

If you focus all of your emotional passion on your children and you neglect the relationship that brought that family into existence ... eventually, things can go really, really wrong, — Ayelet Waldman

Why are the architects of the family-values agenda so eager to punish into the next generation? What is being served by seeking, quite literally, a tooth for a tooth? — Ayelet Waldman

I think in Israel there is so much talent in the TV world because there's less movies done. — Ayelet Zurer

People never bothered to pay attention to those who served them. Waiters and drivers were the most invisible people in the world. — Ayelet Waldman

I am an adamant feminist. It never occurred to me to take my husband's name when we married. I am a supporter of abortion rights, of equal pay for equal work, of the rights of women prisoners, of all the time-honored feminist causes, and then some. — Ayelet Waldman

Even if i'm setting myself up for failure, I think it's worth trying to be a mother who delights in who her children are, in their knock-knock jokes and earnest questions. A mother who spends less time obseessing about what will happen, or what has happened, and more time reveling in what is. A mother who doesn't fret over failings and slights, who realizes her worries and anxieties are just thoughts, the continuous chattering and judgement of a too busy mind. A mother who doesn't worry so much about being bad or good but just recognizes that she's both, and neither. A mother who does her best, and for whom that is good enough, even if, in the end, her best turns out to be, simply, not bad. — Ayelet Waldman

I grew up watching a lot of Italian and French movies, so I want to have that '70s look, in my dream movie. I want that thing that's not so much happening now, that's existentialist. — Ayelet Zurer

I hate homework. I hate it more now than I did when I was the one lugging textbooks and binders back and forth from school. The hour my children are seated at the kitchen table, their books spread out before them, the crumbs of their after-school snack littering the table, is without a doubt the worst hour of my day. — Ayelet Waldman

I always tell my kids that as soon as you have a secret, something about you that you are ashamed to have others find out, you have given other people the power to hurt you by exposing you. — Ayelet Waldman

[W]hatever my intentions, whatever the truth of my claim, I had no business giving a lecture to a total stranger. — Ayelet Waldman

We see nation-states collapsing all around us: Libya, Syria, Iraq. We do not want another failed state in our neighborhood, which would rapidly turn into a stronghold for terrorists, as we have seen in Gaza. We do not want tunnels to suburbs of Tel Aviv or missiles pointed at Jerusalem. — Ayelet Shaked

I'd written personal essays before, but never on this scale
never so often and with such, er, honesty. (If by honesty I mean slashing my wrists and hemorrhaging all over the computer screen). — Ayelet Waldman

The thing is, my fantasies about being a parent always involved fighting for my unpopular child, doing for her what my own parents couldn't do for me when I was a girl. I am so ready to be that little girl's mother. — Ayelet Waldman

I love the novel of 'The English Patient'; I think it's a profoundly beautiful novel. I love the movie of 'The English Patient'; I think it's a profoundly beautiful movie. And they're totally different. You accept each on its own terms, and that's kind of the ideal. — Ayelet Waldman

I love reader mail, and I do read it, but I won't read hate mail. — Ayelet Waldman

Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism. They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there. — Ayelet Shaked

I feed my kids organic food and milk, but I've also been known to buy the odd Lunchable. My kids are not allowed to watch TV during the week, but on weekends even the 2-year-old veges out to 'The Simpsons.' — Ayelet Waldman

Another parent's different approach raises the possibility that you've made a mistake with your child. We simply can't tolerate that because we fear that any mistake, no matter how minor, could have devastating consequences. So we proclaim the superiority of our own choices. We've lost sight of the fact that people have preferences. — Ayelet Waldman

I am very proud of our Supreme Court - it is one of the best worldwide. Nevertheless, since the 1990s, we have seen a certain imbalance in the relationship between the judiciary, the parliament and the government. The Supreme Court behaved in an activist way. We have to debate the degree to which such Supreme Court activism is appropriate. — Ayelet Shaked

Aborting my baby is the most serious of the many maternal crimes I tally in my head when I am at my lowest, when the Bad Mother label seems to fit best. Rocketship was my baby. And I killed him. — Ayelet Waldman

Let's all commit ourselves to the basic civility of minding our own business. Failing that, let's go back to a time when we were nasty and judgmental, but only behind one another's backs. — Ayelet Waldman

The biggest challenge for any craft person or artist is to accept the constraints of their medium and make something beautiful despite them. That's kind of fun, actually. — Ayelet Waldman

I'm an actress. In this sense, my profession is less complex than that of a model. True, they're into beauty in Hollywood, and it is age-related, but you can't put a girl with hot lips and no wrinkles and say: 'That's the mother of a 14-year-old.' — Ayelet Zurer

Like the protagonist of her 2006 novel, 'Love and Other Impossible Pursuits,' Ayelet Waldman is a Jewish redhead who attended Harvard Law School and is madly in love with her husband. But the obvious similarities end there. — Katie Hafner

There are so many directors that I want to work with, but I can't tell you that there's one role. If I knew it, I would write it for myself. — Ayelet Zurer

The first inkling my husband had that I was thinking about suicide was when he checked my blog. — Ayelet Waldman

I do not take things to the heart. I calculate and I do what needs to be done. If I were to start acting emotionally, it would destroy my work. — Ayelet Shaked

Before I was married, I didn't consider my failure to manage even basic hand tools a feminist inadequacy. I thought it had more to do with being Jewish. The Jews I knew growing up didn't do 'do-it-yourself.' When my father needed to hammer something he generally used his shoe, and the only real tool he owned was a pair of needle-nose pliers. — Ayelet Waldman

If you don't have a brilliant screenplay, then you either have amazing actors who give you the chance to improve whatever is on the page, or an interesting director who has enough faith in the project that they can carry it through and get it somewhere. One of those factors needs to happen. If not, it's sad. — Ayelet Zurer

How many straight men maintain inappropriately intimate relationships with their mothers? How many shop with them? I want a gay son. People laugh, but they assume I'm kidding. I'm not. — Ayelet Waldman

Most writers spend their lives standing a little apart from the crowd, watching and listening and hoping to catch that tiny hint of despair, that sliver of malice, that makes them think, 'Aha, here is the story.' — Ayelet Waldman

I used to refer to myself as a 'theoretical anorexic,' just as crazy when it came to body image, but saved by a lack of self-discipline. My daughters do everything better than I do - they're smarter, more beautiful, happier. What if they end up better at anorexia, too? — Ayelet Waldman

But I really feel strongly that our kids do way too much homework. The research is on my side. It's easy to make a fuss when you're right. That can be the tagline of my life: 'It's Easy To Make A Fuss When You're Right.' — Ayelet Waldman

You really want to make sure that you have fun, at the end of the day. If it's not fun, what's the point. — Ayelet Zurer

My own husband was divorced when we met, but without kids. I don't know what I would have done if he'd had them. I got the message very early on that the worst mistake a woman can make is marrying a man with children. — Ayelet Waldman

If producing a regular column is living out loud, then keeping a daily blog is living at the top of your lungs. For a couple of months there, I was shrieking like a banshee. — Ayelet Waldman

We will not commit suicide because of pressure from the international community. A Palestinian state is not possible at the moment. I would rather fight and try to explain the situation in the Middle East to the world than to agree to steps that harm my country to satisfy the international community. — Ayelet Shaked

I'm sure there are people who survive tragedy without humor, but I've never met any of them. Nor would I be particularly interested in writing about them if I did meet them. — Ayelet Waldman

Where would the memoir be without bipolar writers? I mean, that's what - that whole oversharing thing is really a very clear symptom of bipolar disorder. And I'm not saying that every, you know, I'm not accusing every memoirist of being bipolar. But I think in a way it's kind of a gift. — Ayelet Waldman

If only shame were a reliable engine for behavior modification. All it does is make me feel bad, which inspires me to bust open a bag of cheese popcorn, which then makes me feel crappy about my weight. — Ayelet Waldman

I never see myself as the famous person. It never was a part of my life, and I hope this doesn't become the most eminent thing about what I do. I just hope that I'll do things that have meaning for me and for others somehow. — Ayelet Zurer

Personally, I think four is the perfect number of children for our particular family. Four is enough to create the frenzied cacophony that my husband and I find so joyful. — Ayelet Waldman

I believe that mothers should tell the truth, even - no, especially - when the truth is difficult. It's always easier, and in the short term can even feel right, to pretend everything is okay, and to encourage your children to do the same. But concealment leads to shame, and of all hurts shame is the most painful. — Ayelet Waldman

As the head of a religious party, I am not in favor of civil marriage or the full recognition of non-Orthodox converts in Israel. — Ayelet Shaked

The age of 20 was all about stupid things. I did crazy things but never lost it. I was, you know, a little crazy. I once broke up with my boyfriend in London and went to an Indian guy's apartment who I didn't know and who told me he saw my aura and gave me a massage. — Ayelet Zurer

Perhaps my children will one day pledge their loyalty to the Republican Party. Or perhaps they'll dismiss my liberalism as mild pap, and become anarchists. Either way may well be a reaction to my manipulation, my values. We are all the product of the indoctrination we received at the hands of our parents, even when we are repudiating that ideology. — Ayelet Waldman

When my first daughter was born, my husband held her in his hands and said, 'My God, she's so beautiful.' I unwrapped the baby from her blankets. She was average size, with long thin fingers and a random assortment of toes. Her eyes were close set, and she had her father's hooked nose. It looked better on him. — Ayelet Waldman

I mean, I do actually think there is a qualitative difference between aborting in the early part of the first trimester and in, you know, the middle or later part of the second trimester, in a way that you feel about it in that you grow attached. — Ayelet Waldman

I wrote three novels in six months, with a clarity of focus and attention to detail that I had never before experienced. This type of sublime creative energy is characteristic of the elevated and productive mood state known as hypomania. — Ayelet Waldman

Amitai shook his head, almost smiling, because here he was, feeling for the first time that the tragedy of European Jewry did belong to him. Before today, his lack of personal connection to the Holocaust had made it a distant history, no more relevant to him than any other. But Natalie, the locket, the painting, the Hall of Names, taking responsibility for Komlos in the Pages of Testimony, these had brought him to he realization that, merely by virtue of being a Jew, even a Jew from another place and time, it was his history, too. Not personally, but collectively. It belonged to him, as he belonged to all those Jews rising up into the infinite ceiling in the Hall of Names. He and Natalie were in the same place, but they had come from different directions. — Ayelet Waldman

Is Valentine's Day a day to make cupcakes with your children? No, Valentine's is supposed to be a day about romantic love. — Ayelet Waldman

I think it's worth trying to be a mother who delights in who her children are, in their knock-knock jokes and earnest questions. A mother who spends less time obsessing about what will happen, or what has happened, and more time reveling in what is. — Ayelet Waldman

Every time I meet an ambassador, I bring to the a table a list of NGOs I think are acting against Israel, promoting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) or denouncing our soldiers. I ask from them to stop contributing to these specific NGOs. But, unfortunately, it does not help. I do not want countries that are friends of ours to contribute to such organizations. — Ayelet Shaked

So many women today have become so focused on their children, they've developed these romantic entanglements with their children's lives, and the husbands are secondary. They're left out. And the romantic focus is on the children. — Ayelet Waldman

Love and marriage are about work and compromise. They're about seeing someone for what he is, being dissapointed , and deciding to stick around anyway. They're about commitment and comfort, not some kind of sudden, hysterical recognition'. 'That's not what I want. Disspointment and comfort is not what I want'. 'Why not? Because you expect it to be magical and mystical? Because you don't want to work?' 'Why can't it be magical? Why can't it be mystical?' 'Because if you count on magic and mysticism, then as soon as shit happens, as soon as life interferes, as soon as your stepson treats you badly, or your husband's ex-wife has a fit about something, or your baby dies, as soon as life happens, the magic will disappear and you'll be left with nothing. You can't count on magic. Trust me, I know. Sweetheart, little girl, you can't count on magic'. — Ayelet Waldman

Even in the big movies, if the scenes are very big, I'm not fond of them as much as I'm fond of small actor scenes. — Ayelet Zurer

I can't imagine the reading is still going on. He's written about Canada, for God's sake. How much can there be to say? — Ayelet Waldman

I mean, I absolutely call myself a feminist. And by that, I mean a woman who believes that your opportunities should not be constrained by your gender, that women should be entitled to the same opportunities as men. — Ayelet Waldman

I did not want to raise a genetically compromised child. I did not want my children to have to contend with the massive diversion of parental attention, and the consequences of being compelled to care for their brother after I died. I wanted a genetically perfect baby, and because that was something I could control, I chose to end his life. — Ayelet Waldman

Why is it that loving something provides such little protection from betrayal? — Ayelet Waldman

There's no such thing as too late. There are different roles for different ages, assuming an actress has something to offer. There aren't many Helen Mirrens and Meryl Steeps, and it takes a lot of talent to get to that level. I hope I have it. That's the model I aspire to if I'm lucky enough. It's all about luck. — Ayelet Zurer