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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
Certain
Challenge
Book
Challenges
Writing
Simply
Vehemence
Written
Disapproval
Story
Criticize
Fear
Speaks
Speak
Chosen
Stories
Critics

More quotes by Joyce Maynard

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Growing up in the fifties and sixties, I can only remember knowing one child, ever, whose parents got a divorce, and hardly any whose mother worked at anything besides raising her children.
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It's not only children who grow. Parents do too.
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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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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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Long after Salinger sent me away, I continued to believe his standards and expectations were the best ones.
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Those who rhapsodize about the ease and joy of childhood have perhaps forgotten what it's like to be 12 years old.
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I have long observed that the act of writing is viewed, by some, as an elite and otherworldly act, all the more so if a person isn't paid for what she writes.
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I continued to protect him with my silence.
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I have no doubt that over the years my children will find plenty of things about me to criticize. But something tells me that twenty years from now not one of them will sit on some therapist's couch complaining because their mother didn't spend enough time vacuuming up glitter.
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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.
Joyce Maynard
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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.
Joyce Maynard
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I believe every one of us possesses a fundamental right to tell our own story.
Joyce Maynard
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My job is writing. I get paid to do it. When was the last time you heard someone challenge a doctor for making money off of cancer?
Joyce Maynard
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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.
Joyce Maynard
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For 25 years, I did take my responsibilities as a pleaser of others sufficiently seriously.
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.
Joyce Maynard
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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)
Joyce Maynard
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There is a theme that runs through my work, and that is: the toxic property of keeping secrets.
Joyce Maynard
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Many women my age have known the experience of giving up crucial parts of themselves to please the man they love.
Joyce Maynard
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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.
Joyce Maynard