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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
Lessons
Early
Marriage
Bring
History
Developmental
Love
Shape
Expectations
Shapes

More quotes by 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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I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
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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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We cannot love others as others unless we possess suficient self-love, a love we learn from being loved in infancy.
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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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Superstition is foolish, childish, primitive and irrational - but how much does it cost you to knock on wood?
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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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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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
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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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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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[On writing her first poem at age eight:] An ode to my dead mother and father, who were both alive and pretty pissed off.
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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 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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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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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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Late birds get worms while early birds get tired.
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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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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Living with golden fantasies of an endlessly nurtured infancy can be a neurotic refusal to grow up.
Judith Viorst