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If only shame were a reliable engine for behavior modification. All it does is make me feel bad, which inspires me to bust open a bag of cheese popcorn, which then makes me feel crappy about my weight.

Ayelet Waldman

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Ayelet Waldman
Age: 59
Born: 1964
Born: December 11
Journalist
Lawyer
Novelist
Short Story Writer
Writer
Jerusalem
Middle East
Makes
Engines
Doe
Cheese
Crappy
Feel
Bags
Modification
Feels
Shame
Bust
Make
Inspire
Popcorn
Weight
Reliable
Behavior
Engine
Open
Inspires

More quotes by Ayelet Waldman

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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
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I expend far too much of my maternal energies on guilt and regret.
Ayelet Waldman
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Where would the memoir be without bipolar writers? I mean, that's what - that whole oversharing thing is really a very clear symptom of bipolar disorder. And I'm not saying that every, you know, I'm not accusing every memoirist of being bipolar. But I think in a way it's kind of a gift.
Ayelet Waldman
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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
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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
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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
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Why is it that loving something provides such little protection from betrayal?
Ayelet Waldman
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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
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Nothing makes me roll my eyes faster than a Coexist bumper sticker.
Ayelet Waldman
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There are times as a parent when you realize that your job is not to be the parent you always imagined you'd be, the parent you always wished you had. Your job is to be the parent your child needs, given the particulars of his or her own life and nature.
Ayelet Waldman
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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
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The stereotypical gay man is someone whose company I enjoy, someone who makes me laugh, someone I'd want my kid to be. The stereotypical gay woman makes me insecure, conscious of my failings as a feminist.
Ayelet Waldman
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In a perfect world, probably we'd never yell, we'd just be firm and dispassionate. But of course, everyone yells at their children.
Ayelet Waldman
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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
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I've only ever been interested in drugs as therapeutic tools.
Ayelet Waldman
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I really think we were charting a course to having a more sane response to mass incarceration, to drug use, and to understanding that the war on drugs has resulted only in the empowerment of vast criminal enterprises and the destruction of democracies around the world. And all that is coming to a miserable, horrific halt.
Ayelet Waldman
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I wish I could view the belly that oozes over the top of my pants as a badge of maternal honor. I do try. I make sure that the women whose looks I admire all have sufficient fat reserves to survive a famine, and I make a lot of snide comments about the skeletal likes of Lara Flynn Boyle and Paris Hilton.
Ayelet Waldman
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With prodigious bravery and eviscerating humor, Roxane Gay takes on culture and politics in Bad Feminist-and gets it right, time and time again. We should all be lucky enough to be such a bad feminist.
Ayelet Waldman
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I'd written personal essays before, but never on this scale -- never so often and with such, er, honesty. (If by honesty I mean slashing my wrists and hemorrhaging all over the computer screen).
Ayelet Waldman
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If God were like a Star Wars Force linking all consciousness, I supposed I could maybe believe that. But let's just say I'm not going to be running off to India to join an ashram anytime soon.
Ayelet Waldman