Quotes from Judith Viorst

In history class, I wrote a poem, 'The Royalists and the Roundheads.' I would write poems about driftwood in art class and little stories about the sun, moon, and stars in science class. Since not many kids were writing in class, I got away with it.

Mas reconhecer tudo isso e ainda assim encontrar a liberdade, fazer as escolhas, saber o que é e o que pode vir a ser, isso é o adulto responsável. Curvando-se à necessidade, deve escolher. Es- sa liberdade de escolha é a carga e a dádiva que todos recebem ao deixar a infância, a carga e a dádiva que todos levam quando atin- gem o fim da infância.

I thought that the 40s was a tough decade, because it's when you finally figure out that you're not immortal, when you really start seeing that certain options are closed to you forever: You're not going to be a brain surgeon; you're not going to be a ballerina.

I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

Our mother gives us our earliest lessons in love- and its partner, hate. Our father-our "second other"-elaborates on them.

For we lose not only by death, but also by leaving and being left, by changing and letting go and moving on.

Starting after 60, I thought, 'I'm not going to be able to write a book of poems on the 70s. It's going to be all moans and groans and complaints, and what is there to laugh about?' But I found plenty to laugh about.

I not only wanted to write when I was 7 and 8, but I sent stuff out when I was 7 and 8. I sent it out... and I couldn't believe that they would turn down my poems about faithful dogs.

Probably above all other things, I am interested as a writer in making a connection, interested in the parts of all of us that connect.

My Girl Scout leader. She told me if I listened more and talked less, I could grow up to be a good writer. I thought that was interesting advice at age 12.

My mother was a huge, huge reader. I think I picked up very early how precious it was to write things in books and have people like my mother glued to the page.

It is true that the present is powerfully shaped by the past. But it is also true that ... insight at any age keeps us from singing the same sad songs again.

Recognize joy when it arrives in the plain brown wrappings of everyday life.

Because we believe ourselves to be better parents than our parents, we expect to produce better children than they produced.

I like to take all my feelings and thoughts and put them down in different ways on paper.

It's very hard when I've seen a couple of people very beloved in my life with terrible degenerative diseases.

We begin life with loss. We are cast from the womb without an apartment, a charge plate, a job or a car. We are sucking, sobbing, clinging, helpless babies.

I didn't get one word published until I was well into my 30s. But I always tried.

My first published writings were trying to take scientific concepts and make them clear for a general audience.

Nobody who knows me and loves me dearly would ever call me adaptable or flexible. I'm not.

I had lived with my mother in anger and love - I suppose most daughters do - but my children only knew her in one way: As the lady who thought they were smarter than Albert Einstein. As the lady who thought they wrote better than William Shakespeare. As the lady who thought every picture they drew was a Rembrandt.

All along, I've been writing about our fears, our longings, our fantasies, our ambivalences. When I decided to study psychoanalysis, I did it because I wanted to understand the psychodynamics of it all. Though far from perfect, psychoanalysis offered me a huge, wonderful window on all that.

Close friends contribute to our personal growth. They also contribute to our personal pleasure, making the music sound sweeter, the wine taste richer, the laughter ring louder because they are there.

Sun lighting a child's hair. A friend's embrace. Slow dancing in a safe and quiet place. The pleasures of an ordinary life.