Quotes from Barbara Delinsky

Taking responsibility is a step toward redemption.

Silence had pounded a nail in the coffin of my marriage. But communication was key.

Men weren't always a solution. There were times when they made things worse.

Right or not, a mother always blamed herself when something went wrong.

Confrontation was a great idea – unless the odds were so stacked against you that it was pointless.

Hope is the future lined in gold, my mother used to say, but I didn't agree. Hope wasn't the future. It was only a vehicle to get there.

Which is more abiding – a mother's love or a child's need for it?

If you no longer have a child, are you still a mother?

Sarcasm is the language of the devil.

Searching for self implied either not liking who you are or wanting to escape who you've been.

Choices are easy when you have nothing to lose.

What she did have, after raising two children, was the equivalent of a PhD in mothering and my undying respect.

People don't get what they deserve; they get what they work for.

I had nothing to fear from my father. Except his disappointment. Which was no small thing.

Confidence could be applied like makeup. I knew that for fact.

It was too early in the day for this kind of discussion – but really, was it ever too early to discuss matters of the heart? What if the moment passed and never returned?

If you want to disappear, Emily, you can do it most anywhere.

You kids were all in college, and I suddenly saw that I was stuck alone with a man who, all those years later, was still wanting me to be someone I wasn't.

I can't spend the rest of my life competing for your attention and coming in last.

Parents do bear some of the responsibility if they don't talk to their kids, are never around, even deny their kids the love that young girls often crave when they decide to have a baby.

As I plotted 'Blueprints,' I realized that ageism against women is most obvious in the field of entertainment - and that I needed a TV show in my book.

In plotting a book, my goal is to raise the stakes for the characters and, in so doing, keep the reader mesmerized.

Each of my books is different from the last, each with its own characters, its own setting, its own themes. As a writer, I need the variety. I sense my readers do, too.