Best 60 quotes of Joyce Maynard on MyQuotes

Joyce Maynard

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    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.

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    Joyce Maynard

    A good home must be made, not bought.

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    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.

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    Joyce Maynard

    A person who deserves my loyalty receives it.

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    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.

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    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.

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    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.

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    Joyce Maynard

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

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    Joyce Maynard

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

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    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.

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    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.

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    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.

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    Joyce Maynard

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

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    Joyce Maynard

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

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    Joyce Maynard

    I continued to protect him with my silence.

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    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.

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    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.

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    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.

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    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.

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    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.

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    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.

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    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.

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    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.

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    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.

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    Joyce Maynard

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

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    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

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    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.

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    Joyce Maynard

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

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    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.

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    Joyce Maynard

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

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    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.

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    Joyce Maynard

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

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    Joyce Maynard

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

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    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.

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    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?

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    Joyce Maynard

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

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    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.

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    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.

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    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.

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    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.

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    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.

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    Joyce Maynard

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

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    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.

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    Joyce Maynard

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

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    Joyce Maynard

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

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    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.

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    Joyce Maynard

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

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    Joyce Maynard

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

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    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.

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    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.