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Most of us don't have mothers who blazed a trail for us--at least, not all the way. Coming of age before or during the inception of the women's movement, whether as working parents or homemakers, whether married or divorced, our mothers faced conundrums--what should they be? how should they act?--that became our uncertainties.

Anne Roiphe

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Anne Roiphe
Age: 88
Born: 1935
Born: December 25
Essayist
Film Writer
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
New York City
New York
Working
Uncertainty
Homemaker
Age
Became
Uncertainties
Whether
Married
Inception
Mother
Parents
Trail
Women
Coming
Trails
Way
Movement
Divorced
Least
Faced
Blazed
Parent
Mothers
Conundrums

More quotes by Anne Roiphe

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I think it is a good thing to have woman friends at every stage of life. We confide in each other, we support each other, we understand each other most of the time. Of course, sometimes we are competitive or angry or distant, too. But I do think it is important not to let the main friendships slip away in the sweep of the days.
Anne Roiphe
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You have to have a certain kind of thickening of the hide. I mean, I'm not particularly worried about what other people think. If other people think that I was not the world's most perfect mother, they are completely right.
Anne Roiphe
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It is hard to hold on to friendships when people move away to another state or to another world.
Anne Roiphe
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I think that certainly the artists of the '40s, '50s and '60s were fighting a very conformist society, which didn't give them enough space to live or create, and they were bucking all kinds of spoken and unspoken rules.
Anne Roiphe
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One of the things about parents and children is that there is no way that you go through this without there being mutual anger.
Anne Roiphe
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People always tell me either A. you love him. B. you hate him. My usual answer? C. All of the above.
Anne Roiphe
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I would prefer you not to say, That was the most terribly written piece I've ever read. That would hurt me. But you don't think I'm the best person in the world? Well, alright.
Anne Roiphe
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Is it possible that my sons-in-law will do toilets? If we raise boys to know that diapers need to be changed and refrigerators need to be cleaned, there's hope for the next generation.
Anne Roiphe
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I don't really think it comes as a shock to every writer if somebody in their family is mad at them. Yes, it's very upsetting. But it's inherent in the process of trying to make sense of one's life, which is what I think is perhaps at the bottom of writing at all.
Anne Roiphe
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You have to be a lover of books without expecting more of them than they give - a little pleasure, a little insight, a moment of escape, a deepening of your own humanity. Not much else.
Anne Roiphe
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I believe that it is our human right to be parents and women. And there's no contradiction between feminism, which means women should have all that they are entitled to, all that they can do, all the opportunities that they can take advantage of they should have.
Anne Roiphe
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Sometimes what we call love is just a settling of old scores, or a seeking of forbidden pain, or a circuitous path to the kingdom of cruelty, or she may simply have confused lack of capital with heroism while searching for rescue without knowing from what.
Anne Roiphe
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Reader, you forget that economics precedes religion worship grew out of eating, not the other way around.
Anne Roiphe
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What other people think of me is not really my major concern in life. What other people think of what I write is another matter.
Anne Roiphe
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When I grew up, you needed to have straight hair. It's symbolic of needing to be like everyone else, needing to look like everyone else. And what that meant was looking like the dominant ruling class in America.
Anne Roiphe
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I know that family life in America is a minefield, an economic trap for women, a study in disappointment for both sexes.
Anne Roiphe
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Everybody is bound by some social rules. But I think that artists need some kind of freedom to explore their minds and that some of them tend to take that freedom to live a little more openly or a little more dangerously, sometimes a lot more self-destructively, than other people.
Anne Roiphe
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Many writers do write about their families and their immediate loved ones and love experiences, either as children or as adults. And very often people get offended by it.
Anne Roiphe
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We have to recognize that it is a very, very painful thing for people to be exposed to their social community, to be exposed in the world, as not what they would have wanted to be seen as. This is very painful and difficult for people.
Anne Roiphe
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Self-pity is never useful. It tends to distort like a fun-house mirror.
Anne Roiphe