Quote

Adolescence involves our nutty-desperate-ecstatic-rash psychological efforts to come to terms with new bodies and outrageous urges.

Judith Viorst

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Judith Viorst
Age: 93
Born: 1931
Born: February 2
Author
Journalist
Writer
Newark
New Jersey
Bodies
Ecstatic
Terms
Outrageous
Effort
Adolescence
Term
Involves
Body
Urges
Come
Efforts
Desperate
Nutty
Psychological
Rash

More quotes by Judith Viorst

Image
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
Image
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.
Judith Viorst
Image
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
Image
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.
Judith Viorst
Image
Brevity may be the soul of wit, but not when someone's saying I love you.
Judith Viorst
Image
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
Image
Losing is the price we pay for living. It is also the source of much of our growth and gain.
Judith Viorst
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I think I'll move to Australia.
Judith Viorst
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Late birds get worms while early birds get tired.
Judith Viorst
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Suffering makes you deep. Travel makes you broad. In case I get my pick, I'd rather travel.
Judith Viorst
Image
No-fault guilt: This is when, instead of trying to figure out who's to blame, everyone pays.
Judith Viorst
Image
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.
Judith Viorst
Image
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.
Judith Viorst
Image
We cannot love others as others unless we possess suficient self-love, a love we learn from being loved in infancy.
Judith Viorst