23 Quotes by 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.
- Women writers have been told, forever, that our stories were not valuable. Not as valuable as men's stories about wars, business, power.
- Many women my age have known the experience of giving up crucial parts of themselves to please the man they love.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- The painter who feels obligated to depict his subjects as uniformly beautiful or handsome and without flaws will fall short of making art.
- The portrait of my parents is a complicated one, but lovingly drawn.
- 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.
- It is not the task of a reader to please her subjects.
- The silence was part of the story I wanted to tell.
- 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.
- A person who deserves my loyalty receives it.
- 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.
- For 25 years, I did take my responsibilities as a pleaser of others sufficiently seriously.
- I believe every one of us possesses a fundamental right to tell our own story.
- 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.
- If I told you about all the stories I don't tell, I would be violating the very boundaries I set for myself.
- I continued to protect him with my silence.
- 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.
- 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?
- I compromised my ability to tell my story, at the most basic level.
- Long after Salinger sent me away, I continued to believe his standards and expectations were the best ones.
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