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Telling a lie is called wrong. Telling the truth is called right. Except when telling the truth is called bad manners and telling a lie is called polite.

Judith Viorst

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Judith Viorst
Age: 93
Born: 1931
Born: February 2
Author
Journalist
Writer
Newark
New Jersey
Called
Wrong
Lying
Truth
Right
Polite
Manners
Telling
Except

More quotes by Judith Viorst

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Late birds get worms while early birds get tired.
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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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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Suffering makes you deep. Travel makes you broad. In case I get my pick, I'd rather travel.
Judith Viorst
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Brevity may be the soul of wit, but not when someone's saying I love you.
Judith Viorst
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I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
Judith Viorst
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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.
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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Living with golden fantasies of an endlessly nurtured infancy can be a neurotic refusal to grow up.
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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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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[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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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.
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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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
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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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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
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Close friends contribute to our personal growth. They also contribute to our personal pleasure, making the music sound sweeter, the wine taste richer, the laughter ring louder because they are there.
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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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