Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" 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. "

Related Quotes:

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Those who rhapsodize about the ease and joy of childhood have perhaps forgotten what it's like to be 12 years old. "

" 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! "

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

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

" 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? "

" There is a theme that runs through my work, and that is: the toxic property of keeping secrets. "

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

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

" Women writers have been told, forever, that our stories were not valuable. Not as valuable as men's stories about wars, business, power. "

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

" The big dramas that fascinate me are the quiet ones that happen behind closed doors in so-called ordinary families. "

" 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. "

" 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? "

" You write about what you know, and you write about what you want to know. "

" To share our stories is not only a worthwhile endeavor for the storyteller, but for those who hear our stories and feel less alone because of it. "

" The process of writing has always started for me when I put myself in a place where no one distracts me. "

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

" When people ask what I write about, that's what I tell them: 'The drama of human relationships.' I'm not even close to running out of material. "

" I continued to protect him with my silence. "

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

" A person who deserves my loyalty receives it. "

" 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. "