Quotes from Joyce Maynard

Love doesn't come and go when it's real. Love is supposed to be constant.

Daughters, he told her as they dug. Nothing better than a good daughter.

How does it happen that a person with whom you have shared your most intimate moments—greatest love, greatest pain, joy, also grief—can become a stranger?

Friends. There's a loaded word for you. I know some people, when speaking of a particular relationship, may say "we're just friends," as if this were some lesser form of connection to that of lovers or so-called soul mates. But to me, there may be no bond that matters more, in the end, than friendship. True and enduring friendship. Alice

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

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?

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

A good home must be made, not bought.

Imagine if you succeeded in making the world perfect for your children what a shock the rest of life would be for them.

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.

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

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

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

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

It is not the task of a reader to please her subjects.

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.

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.

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.

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