Quote

We will have to give up the hope that, if we try hard, we somehow will always do right by our children. The connection is imperfect. We will sometimes do wrong.

Judith Viorst

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Judith Viorst
Age: 93
Born: 1931
Born: February 2
Author
Journalist
Writer
Newark
New Jersey
Right
Hard
Imperfect
Sometimes
Connection
Giving
Somehow
Children
Connections
Trying
Wrong
Always
Hope
Give

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If his mother was drowning and I was drowning and he had to choose one of us to save, He says he'd save me.
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Our early lessons in love and our developmental history shape the expectations we bring into marriage.
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We have to divide mother love with our brothers and sisters. Our parents can help us cope with the loss of our dream of absolute love. But they cannot make us believe that we haven't lost it.
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I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
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Adolescence involves our nutty-desperate-ecstatic-rash psychological efforts to come to terms with new bodies and outrageous urges.
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When he is late for dinner and I know he must be either having an affair or lying dead in the street, I always hope he's dead.
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I had it together on Sunday. By Monday at noon it had cracked. On Tuesday debris Was descending on me. And by Wednesday no part was intact. On Thursday I picked up some pieces. On Friday I picked up the rest. By Saturday, late, It was almost set straight. And on Sunday the world was impressed With how well I had got it together.
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we love as soon as we learn to distinguish a separate 'you' and 'me.' Love is our attempt to assuage the terror and isolation of that separateness.
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Superstition is foolish, childish, primitive and irrational - but how much does it cost you to knock on wood?
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Late birds get worms while early birds get tired.
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We begin life with loss. We are cast from the womb without an apartment, a charge plate, a job or a car. We are sucking, sobbing, clinging, helpless babies.
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[On writing her first poem at age eight:] An ode to my dead mother and father, who were both alive and pretty pissed off.
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Brevity may be the soul of wit, but not when someone's saying I love you.
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The need to become a separate self is as urgent as the yearning to merge forever. And as long as we, not our mother, initiate parting, and as long as our mother remains reliably there, it seems possible to risk, and even to revel in, standing alone.
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Strength is the capacity to break a chocolate bar into four pieces with your bare hands - and then eat just one of the pieces.
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We cannot love others as others unless we possess suficient self-love, a love we learn from being loved in infancy.
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Lust is what keeps you wanting to do it even when you have no desire to be with each other. Love is what makes you want to be with each other even when you have no desire to do it.
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Losing is the price we pay for living. It is also the source of much of our growth and gain.
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READ! Books can be as delicious as hot-fudge sundaes, as funny as clowns, as exciting as a baseball game that's tied in the 9th inning, and as beautiful as the best sunset you ever saw.
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Because we believe ourselves to be better parents than our parents, we expect to produce better children than they produced.
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