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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.

Judith Viorst

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Judith Viorst
Age: 93
Born: 1931
Born: February 2
Author
Journalist
Writer
Newark
New Jersey
Age
Odes
Father
Pissed
Mother
Poem
Firsts
Eight
First
Poet
Children
Dead
Writing
Pretty
Alive

More quotes by Judith Viorst

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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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Not listening is probably the commonest unkindness of married life, and one that creates - more devastatingly than an eternity of forgotten birthdays and misguided Christmas gifts - an atmosphere of not loving and not caring.
Judith Viorst
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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.
Judith Viorst
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For many men the denial of dependency on their mother is repeated in their subsequent relationships, sometimes by an absence of any sexual interest in women, sometimes by a pattern of loving and leaving them.
Judith Viorst
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Superstition is foolish, childish, primitive and irrational - but how much does it cost you to knock on wood?
Judith Viorst
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Adolescence involves our nutty-desperate-ecstatic-rash psychological efforts to come to terms with new bodies and outrageous urges.
Judith Viorst
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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.
Judith Viorst
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Sun lighting a child's hair. A friend's embrace. Slow dancing in a safe and quiet place. The pleasures of an ordinary life.
Judith Viorst
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No-fault guilt: This is when, instead of trying to figure out who's to blame, everyone pays.
Judith Viorst
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Losing is the price we pay for living. It is also the source of much of our growth and gain.
Judith Viorst
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I think I'll move to Australia.
Judith Viorst
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Because we believe ourselves to be better parents than our parents, we expect to produce better children than they produced.
Judith Viorst
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Our mother gives us our earliest lessons in love- and its partner, hate. Our father-our second other-elaborates on them.
Judith Viorst
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Our early lessons in love and our developmental history shape the expectations we bring into marriage.
Judith Viorst
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Our father presents an optional set of rhythms and responses for us to connect to. As a second home base, he makes it safer to roam. With him as an ally--a love--it is safer, too, to show that we're mad when we're mad at our mother. We can hate and not be abandoned, hate and still love.
Judith Viorst
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Late birds get worms while early birds get tired.
Judith Viorst
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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.
Judith Viorst
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My mom says I'm her sugarplum. My mom says I'm her lamb. My mom says I'm completely perfect Just the way I am. My mom says I'm a super-special wonderful terrific little guy. My mom just had another baby. Why?
Judith Viorst
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A normal adolescent is so restless and twitchy and awkward that he can mange to injure his knee--not playing soccer, not playing football--but by falling off his chair in the middle of French class.
Judith Viorst
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It is true that the present is powerfully shaped by the past. But it is also true that ... insight at any age keeps us from singing the same sad songs again.
Judith Viorst