Quotes from Margaret Trudeau

I can't be a rose in any man's lapel.

I don't paint, and I can't draw, but I see things, I think, quite well, and I love being able to freeze things with the camera, particularly the children. Then I discovered with the camera that you can tell a whole story with just freezing a moment in reality. I find it a very good way, a very satisfying feeling.

There's nothing antifeminist about showing a lovely body; it's part of the person you are.

Don't feel badly when you take off work to go for a run, to go for a walk; don't feel badly to take time to play with your children, to be part of their lives. Work is important, but you can't work at your best unless you're a whole person.

I have a bigger, peaceful view of life than aggressively breaking down other people.

We can choose to wake up and grumble all day and be bitter and angry and judge others and find satisfaction in others doing bad instead of good. Or we can we wake up with optimism and love and say, 'Just what is this beautiful day going to bring me?'

You can't fix yourself out of a mental health issue. You can't wake up and say, 'Today I'm not being depressed!' It's a process to get well, but there is recovery.

I know, as a mother, it hurts you very much to see your children suffer.

I have some great stories. But I am also very human, and I suffered an awful lot.

I know it will blow minds, but I plan on finding an apartment in New York. I'll commute to Ottawa, so I can still be Pierre Trudeau's wife and the mother of our three children - but I also want to be a working photographer.

I tried during the 1974 campaign to show my husband not as the aloof intellectual people think he is, but the warm, passionate man I know. But the day after the election - after I'd worked so hard - I was put back on the shelf. I was devastated.

I've never been one to celebrate anniversaries.

Pierre was an extraordinary teacher - he really was one of the best, and he raised the boys so, so well: to have a global view, to have compassion, to be humanitarians, to really be concerned about alleviating suffering.

I am a free spirit that must survive in a free world.

At 65, most of us still have a lot to give and a lot to contribute.

I remember, after my first postpartum depression, I didn't know what had happened to me. I was stuck in this gray depression where I just wanted to retreat and pull the covers over my head and weep. My mother and I, we went to a psychiatrist, and he just patted me on the head and told me I had baby blues, which was not helpful, obviously.

I am not a weirdo, a wacko, or an eccentric for wanting to do good, honest work on a day-to-day basis.

I was pregnant and nursing most of the years I was at 24 Sussex. I was ill-prepared and hardly even knew my husband, let alone how I was supposed to fit into this world that was very alien to me.

Simply put, women should prepare in their 50s for the rest of their lives.

I live with being bipolar, but it doesn't define me anymore.

Mania is the most destructive of the forces. Everybody around you will tell you you're in trouble, and you can't hear what they are saying.

I think I devoted my life to Pierre Trudeau and our beautiful children.

Do you know what prepares you for the mental hospital? Being a prime minister's wife.

I prepared myself for my marriage to Pierre Trudeau, but I didn't prepare myself for marriage to the prime minister.