Quote

I expend far too much of my maternal energies on guilt and regret.

Ayelet Waldman

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Ayelet Waldman
Age: 59
Born: 1964
Born: December 11
Journalist
Lawyer
Novelist
Short Story Writer
Writer
Jerusalem
Middle East
Guilt
Regret
Energy
Much
Expend
Maternal
Energies

More quotes by Ayelet Waldman

Image
The Q I loathe and despise, the Q every single writer I know loathes and despises, is this one: 'Where,' the reader asks, 'do you get your ideas?' It's a simple question, and my usual response is a kind of helpless, 'I don't know.'
Ayelet Waldman
Image
I pity the young woman who will attempt to insinuate herself between my mama's boy and me. I sympathize with the monumental nature of her task. It will take a crowbar, two bulldozers and half a dozen Molotov cocktails to pry my Oedipus and me loose from one another.
Ayelet Waldman
Image
Look, if you ask a child, 'Would you rather have a fulfilled mother or a stay-at-home Sylvia Plath,' they'll pick Sylvia Plath every time. But I think it's really important that children don't feel their parents' emotional lives depend on their success.
Ayelet Waldman
Image
If producing a regular column is living out loud, then keeping a daily blog is living at the top of your lungs. For a couple of months there, I was shrieking like a banshee.
Ayelet Waldman
Image
I have made so many mistakes as a mother. But the one thing that I know I do is I make sure my children know how much I love them and they are absolutely secure in that.
Ayelet Waldman
Image
I tell myself that after four children my belly is already so stretched and flabby that I have to do origami to get my pants buttoned. One more pregnancy and I'd be doomed to elastic waists for the rest of my life.
Ayelet Waldman
Image
Courage is impulsive it is narcissism tempered with nihilism.
Ayelet Waldman
Image
Because of my bipolar disorder, I tend to these mixed states, which are depressed but loud and agitated. So I can be terribly irritable. I go to cognitive behavioral therapy in order not to yell at my children.
Ayelet Waldman
Image
The idea that [Jeff Sessions] is the man who is going to end the progress on the drug war makes me want to rip my hair out, every carefully nurtured curl on my head.
Ayelet Waldman
Image
I'm sure there are people who survive tragedy without humor, but I've never met any of them. Nor would I be particularly interested in writing about them if I did meet them.
Ayelet Waldman
Image
There is no fundamental truth and there's nothing to be connected to: I just believe that [LSD] makes you feel better.
Ayelet Waldman
Image
By the time the children go to bed, I am as drained as any mother who has spent her day working, car pooling, building Lego castles and shopping for the precisely correct soccer cleat.
Ayelet Waldman
Image
I love my husband more than I love my children.
Ayelet Waldman
Image
That connection between hormones and mood is so important to get a handle on, and it's also really important when you're considering taking medication.
Ayelet Waldman
Image
I wrote three novels in six months, with a clarity of focus and attention to detail that I had never before experienced. This type of sublime creative energy is characteristic of the elevated and productive mood state known as hypomania.
Ayelet Waldman
Image
Why are the architects of the family-values agenda so eager to punish into the next generation? What is being served by seeking, quite literally, a tooth for a tooth?
Ayelet Waldman
Image
In every union roles are assumed, some traditional, some not. My husband used to pay his own bills, I used to call my own repairman. But as marriages progress, you surrender areas of your own competence, often without even knowing it.
Ayelet Waldman
Image
Gym class was, of course, where the strongest, best-looking kids were made captains and chose us spazzes last. More important, it was where the figures of supposed authority allowed them to do so. Forget the work our parents did molding our minds and values. Everything fell apart as soon as we put on those maroon polyester gym suits.
Ayelet Waldman
Image
One of the darkest, deepest shames so many of us mothers feel nowadays is our fear that we are Bad Mothers, that we are failing our children and falling far short of our own ideals.
Ayelet Waldman
Image
There is an inverse correlation between the cleanliness of a bathroom and my 3-year-old daughter's need to move her bowels.
Ayelet Waldman