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The vehemence with which certain critics have chosen not simply to criticize what I've written, but to challenge my writing this story at all, speaks of what the book is about: fear of disapproval.

Joyce Maynard

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Joyce Maynard
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: November 5
Author
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Durham
New Hampshire
Daphne Joyce Maynard
Written
Disapproval
Story
Criticize
Fear
Speaks
Speak
Chosen
Stories
Critics
Certain
Challenge
Book
Challenges
Writing
Simply
Vehemence

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For 25 years, I did take my responsibilities as a pleaser of others sufficiently seriously.
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One of the sad realities of being a parent is that the same stuff you know is exciting, educational, and enriching in your child'slife is often messy, smelly and exhausting to deal with.
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[On home births:] In a house where there had been three people, there were now four, although no one had come in the door.
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The painter who feels obligated to depict his subjects as uniformly beautiful or handsome and without flaws will fall short of making art.
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There is a theme that runs through my work, and that is: the toxic property of keeping secrets.
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It troubles me that people speak about writing for money as ugly and distasteful.
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Imagine if you succeeded in making the world perfect for your children what a shock the rest of life would be for them.
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I do not outline. There are writers I know and count as my friends who certainly do it the other way but for me part of the adventure is not knowing how it's going to turn out.
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If I told you about all the stories I don't tell, I would be violating the very boundaries I set for myself.
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I continued to protect him with my silence.
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I had known there had been a serial killer on Mount Tamalpais, and it felt so incongruous in such a beautiful, peaceful spot.
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You lay your hand against his skin and just rib his back. Blow into his ear. Press that baby up against your own skin and walk outside with him, where the night air will sourround him, and moonlight fall on his face. Whistle, maybe. Dance. Hum. Pray. (how to calm a crying baby)
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Wherever it is you make your home, there is always this other place, this other person, calling to you. Come to me. Come back.
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It's not only children who grow. Parents do too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours. I can't tell my children to reach for the sun. All I can do is reach for it, myself.
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Long after Salinger sent me away, I continued to believe his standards and expectations were the best ones.
Joyce Maynard
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It's sad but true that if you focus your attention on housework and meal preparation and diapers, raising children does start to look like drudgery pretty quickly. On the other hand, if you see yourself as nothing less than your child's nurturer, role model, teacher, spiritual guide, and mentor, your days take on a very different cast.
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At Home in the World is the story of a young woman, raised in some difficult circumstances, and how she survives. It tells a story of redemption, not victimhood.
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More than any other setting - more than battlefields or boardrooms or a spaceship headed for intergalactic travel - I'll put my money on the family to provide an endless source of comedy, tragedy and intrigue.
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If a man wishes to truly not be written about, he would do well not to write letters to 18-year-old girls, inviting them into his life.
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It's not only children who grow. Parents do too.
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