Best 16 quotes of Jeanne Marie Laskas on MyQuotes

All peace-loving women shut up when they sense they have stepped onto Guy Turf. Guy Turf is a murky realm of ego and pride and chivalry and testosterone and heroism.

But the writing life, it turned out, was difficult. It wasn't like you could sit down and flip a switch and crank on the ventilation system. Sometimes it didn't work, and sometimes you couldn't even find the switch.

Dreams are matters of the heart, things that pull you along as if they have hooked you someplace deep inside.

Forgiveness is the path to healing.

Isolation is aloneness that feels forced upon you, like a punishment. Solitude is aloneness you choose and embrace. I think great things can come out of solitude, out of going to a place where all is quiet except the beating of your heart.

I think the call of the inward life starts here. Solitude helps you differentiate, define the borders of the self. Solitude helps you figure our where everybody else stops and you begins.

It's much better to be apart and wish you were together than to be together and wish you were apart.

I wanted to go to a place where I could think, really sink into my own imagination, or ride it, or drift along it, as in a balloon. The kind of place that probably all writers crave. The kind of place where the outside world is still and quiet and you get a chance to listen, to peer, to go inward

I was suppose to write a book about being a mom, to organize my thoughts into chapters and figure out a structure to hang them on, to make a lasting point, but somehow I decided to go ahead and become a mother instead.

Maybe the biggest problem with loneliness is that we walk around thinking we're the only ones suffering from it.

Solitude is a place where all is quiet - except the beating of your heart.

This is one of the take-home messages for me: we just walk around with this narrative in America that everybody wants to be rich and famous. That that’s why people do what they do. And you know, all through these pages you learn over and over again no, actually not even NFL cheerleaders are doing it for fame and fortune. There’s another motivation going on that is so pure and human. That to me was an eye-opener in a really wonderful way.

Why do we think the people on stage are the only ones having fun?

You plant a garden one flower at a time. ... You write a book one word at a time, clean a closet one shelf at a time, run a marathon one step at a time. If you feel defeated by some large task, get your spade and dig the first hole.

Brooding is more something I do when I'm working. I know so much more about sitting around worrying about a work project than I do about worrying about kids. This could just be a fact of life for older moms. We've worked and worked and worked and if we are lucky enough to finally have a child or two, we find ourselves suddenly catapulted into a most alien kind of chaos. Work is so much easier. Anyone will tell you that. To have a desk, where you have everything all lined up, and a schedule you more or less get to agree to. Work. I am a worker. This is so funny because I never really think of my work as work. I certainly never though of myself as having a career. Writing, work, this is just who I am. I am a person who sits at a desk and makes phone calls and taps at a computer keyboard and sips coffee and calls her mom at five. That I am anything better or smaller than that has come as sudden news to me. Brand new. News.

The neighbor's flock has taken advantage of the chaos, and I think that's pretty smart.