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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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Judith Viorst
Age: 93
Born: 1931
Born: February 2
Author
Journalist
Writer
Newark
New Jersey
Early
Marriage
Bring
History
Developmental
Love
Shape
Expectations
Shapes
Lessons

More quotes by 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
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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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No-fault guilt: This is when, instead of trying to figure out who's to blame, everyone pays.
Judith Viorst
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I think I'll move to Australia.
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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[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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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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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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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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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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Craving that old sweet oneness yet dreading engulfment, wishing to be our mother's and yet be our own, we stormily swing from mood to mood, advancing and retreating-the quintessential model of two-mindedness.
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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Living with golden fantasies of an endlessly nurtured infancy can be a neurotic refusal to grow up.
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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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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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.
Judith Viorst
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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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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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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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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