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" My mother would have been so crazy about my grandchildren. She was a fabulous grandmother, and she would have been absolutely crazed as a great-grandmother. I miss that part of her. "

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" Everyone has bad days, and when you're having a bad day, you think, 'Here I am being singled out by a hostile, malicious universe that is picking exclusively on me.' And then you read a book about bad days and realize they happen to everyone, not just tormented, persecuted you. "

Judith Viorst

Book

I Am

" I thought that the 40s was a tough decade, because it's when you finally figure out that you're not immortal, when you really start seeing that certain options are closed to you forever: You're not going to be a brain surgeon; you're not going to be a ballerina. "

" Superstition is foolish, childish, primitive and irrational - but how much does it cost you to knock on wood? "

" My Girl Scout leader. She told me if I listened more and talked less, I could grow up to be a good writer. I thought that was interesting advice at age 12. "

Judith Viorst

Age

Thought

" All along, I've been writing about our fears, our longings, our fantasies, our ambivalences. When I decided to study psychoanalysis, I did it because I wanted to understand the psychodynamics of it all. Though far from perfect, psychoanalysis offered me a huge, wonderful window on all that. "

" The years that remain are clearly limited. When you're 80, you attend a lot more funerals. A lot more people are having a hard time and are ill. "

" 'Alexander, Who's Trying His Best to Be the Best Boy Ever' was inspired by a combination of my grandson, my son, and myself - all those times when each of us has decided that we're just not going to get into trouble anymore. But it's so hard to be good all of the time! "

" Kids are always writing me: 'I had a bad day too.' 'I got gum in my hair.' And the kids also write to me to pass on advice to Alexander. My favorite one of those being, 'The next time you have a bad day, blame your brothers.' I didn't expect this. It's certainly the most successful of my books. "

" Kids need to encounter kids like themselves - kids who can sometimes be crabby and fresh and rebellious, kids who talk back and disobey, tell fibs and get into trouble, and are nonetheless still likable and redeemable. "

" 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. "

" You could never plan your life in a million years. "

" I not only wanted to write when I was 7 and 8, but I sent stuff out when I was 7 and 8. I sent it out... and I couldn't believe that they would turn down my poems about faithful dogs. "

" My favorite was 'The Secret Garden'. I loved it, and I think it's had a big influence on all of my characters. 'The Secret Garden' is about transgressions and imperfect people. "

" I like to take all my feelings and thoughts and put them down in different ways on paper. "

Judith Viorst

Feelings

Down

" My first published writings were trying to take scientific concepts and make them clear for a general audience. "

" I could be such a wonderful wife to another wife's husband. "

" I always credited my mother with inspiring me to be a writer because she was such a passionate reader. She read poetry to me as a child. But rather late in life, I've come to appreciate my father, the accountant. He was a solid, organized, get-the-job-done kind of person-and you need that piece of it to be a writer, too. "

" Love is the same as like except you feel sexier. "

" Strength is the capacity to break a chocolate bar into four pieces with your bare hands - and then eat just one of the pieces. "

" I had lived with my mother in anger and love - I suppose most daughters do - but my children only knew her in one way: As the lady who thought they were smarter than Albert Einstein. As the lady who thought they wrote better than William Shakespeare. As the lady who thought every picture they drew was a Rembrandt. "

" Because we believe ourselves to be better parents than our parents, we expect to produce better children than they produced. "

" Everything I have ever written about has been about what's going on inside of us. "

Judith Viorst

Been

Inside

" If I could pick one reason why I want to be a writer, it would be connection. In all kinds of ways, I like to be individual and distinct; but when I write, I want to be writing about things that connect me to the people for whom I write. "

Judith Viorst

Writing

Connection

" I wrote 'And Two Boys Booed' several years ago, but we really chased around looking for the perfect illustrator, so it took a while. "

" The best I can do is, it's like a 'ding!' You're writing, and then something starts falling into place, and you hear or feel a ding. And it just feels - it's going to be okay. "

" Love is much nicer to be in than an automobile accident, a tight girdle, a higher tax bracket or a holding pattern over Philadelphia. "

" A rebel. That was me when I was younger. What was a rebel from New Jersey? A rebel was moving to the Village, not sleeping with top sheets, not eating a hot breakfast in the morning, not having 20 rolls of toilet paper and 10 boxes of Kleenex. "

" Probably above all other things, I am interested as a writer in making a connection, interested in the parts of all of us that connect. "

" What kind of grandmother am I? I'm a 'three-dessert' grandmother. I'm a 'let's just skip the bath tonight, honey, watch another video' grandmother. "

" My mother was a huge, huge reader. I think I picked up very early how precious it was to write things in books and have people like my mother glued to the page. "