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All Quotes by author - Joyce Maynard

" A good home must be made, not bought. In the end, it's not track lighting or a sun room that brings light into a kitchen. "

" Although Salinger had long since cut me out of his life completely and made it plain that he had nothing but contempt for me, the thought of becoming the object of his wrath was more than I felt ready to take on. "

" A person who deserves my loyalty receives it. "

" At Home in the World is the story of a young woman, raised in some difficult circumstances, and how she survives. It tells a story of redemption, not victimhood. "

" For 25 years, I did take my responsibilities as a pleaser of others sufficiently seriously. "

" Growing up in the fifties and sixties, I can only remember knowing one child, ever, whose parents got a divorce, and hardly any whose mother 'worked' at anything besides raising her children. "

" I believed my story would be helpful to young women my daughter's age, who are still in the process of forming themselves as women, and in need of encouragement to remain true to themselves. "

" I believe every one of us possesses a fundamental right to tell our own story. "

" I compromised my ability to tell my story, at the most basic level. "

" I continued to protect him with my silence. "

" I do not outline. There are writers I know and count as my friends who certainly do it the other way, but for me, part of the adventure is not knowing how it's going to turn out. "

" If a man wishes to truly not be written about, he would do well not to write letters to 18-year-old girls, inviting them into his life. "

" If I told you about all the stories I don't tell, I would be violating the very boundaries I set for myself. "

" If people choose to live their life in a way that does not confront the more troubling aspects of their experience, that's fine, if it works for them. But it will probably make them uncomfortable if they come up against somebody like me. So they just shouldn't! They shouldn't read my work! "

" I had known there had been a serial killer on Mount Tamalpais, and it felt so incongruous in such a beautiful, peaceful spot. "

" I have long observed that the act of writing is viewed, by some, as an elite and otherworldly act, all the more so if a person isn't paid for what she writes. "

" I think of myself as a realistic writer, not a creator of soap opera or melodrama. "

" It is not the task of a reader to please her subjects. "

" It's not only children who grow. Parents do too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours. I can't tell my children to reach for the sun. All I can do is reach for it, myself. "

" It troubles me that people speak about writing for money as ugly and distasteful. "

" I've had some wonderful successes and some extreme disappointments in my career and my life. "

" I was giving a speech one time, and the woman who introduced me said, 'Well, she used to be J. D. Salinger's girlfriend. I thought, 'God, is that all I've been?' I didn't want to be reduced to that. "

" I wonder what it is that the people who criticize me for telling this story truly object to: is it that I have dared to tell the story? Or that the story turns out not to be the one they wanted to hear? "

" Long after Salinger sent me away, I continued to believe his standards and expectations were the best ones. "

" Many women my age have known the experience of giving up crucial parts of themselves to please the man they love. "

" More than any other setting - more than battlefields or boardrooms or a spaceship headed for intergalactic travel - I'll put my money on the family to provide an endless source of comedy, tragedy and intrigue. "

" My job is writing. I get paid to do it. When was the last time you heard someone challenge a doctor for making money off of cancer? "

" Nothing like being visible, publishing one's work, and speaking openly about one's life, to disabuse the world of the illusion of one's perfection and purity. "

" Not only did I avoid speaking of Salinger; I resisted thinking about him. I did not reread his letters to me. The experience had been too painful. "

" One life is not enough for me. I want to go lots of places. "

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