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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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Judith Viorst
Age: 93
Born: 1931
Born: February 2
Author
Journalist
Writer
Newark
New Jersey
Marriage
Creates
Listening
Caring
Probably
Atmosphere
Devastatingly
Life
Christmas
Commonest
Loving
Birthdays
Forgotten
Unkindness
Eternity
Misguided
Married
Gifts

More quotes by Judith Viorst

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Our early lessons in love and our developmental history shape the expectations we bring into marriage.
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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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Because we believe ourselves to be better parents than our parents, we expect to produce better children than they produced.
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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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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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I think I'll move to Australia.
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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.
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I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
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One advantage of marriage is that, when you fall out of love with him or he falls out of love with you, it keeps you together until you fall in again.
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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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Suffering makes you deep. Travel makes you broad. In case I get my pick, I'd rather travel.
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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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We grow because the clamorous, permanent presence of our children forces us to put their needs before ours. We grow because our love for our children urges us to change as nothing else in our lives has the power to do. We grow (if we're willing to grow, that is: not every parent is willing) because being a parent helps us stop being a child.
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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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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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.
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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.
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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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Late birds get worms while early birds get tired.
Judith Viorst