Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

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

Related Quotes:

" '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! "

" 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. "

" Close friends contribute to our personal growth. They also contribute to our personal pleasure, making the music sound sweeter, the wine taste richer, the laughter ring louder because they are there. "

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

" 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. "

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

" Starting after 60, I thought, 'I'm not going to be able to write a book of poems on the 70s. It's going to be all moans and groans and complaints, and what is there to laugh about?' But I found plenty to laugh about. "

" Most of the characters I have in my children's books are grouchy or annoyed about something or are calling each other unfriendly names. Like my own kids, they're not honeys and sweetie pies and little angels. They're kids. Sloppy, dirty, stinky. "

" 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. "

" I didn't get one word published until I was well into my 30s. But I always tried. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" We will have to give up the hope that, if we try hard, we somehow will always do right by our children. The connection is imperfect. We will sometimes do wrong. "

" My mother was born in June and later, feeling a vacancy, chose her birth month for her middle name. Marry to marry, had kids because that's what was done. Liked crossword puzzles, liked lilac trees, liked baking in the sun, and liked Bing Crosby. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

" Nobody who knows me and loves me dearly would ever call me adaptable or flexible. I'm not. "

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

" You end up as you deserve. In old age you must put up with the face, the friends, the health, and the children you have earned. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I actually sat down and started three Alexanders at the same time. Two of them went in the trash and got stomped on because I hated the idea so much. And the one I came up with, I got very excited by. And that's 'Alexander, Who's Trying His Best to Be the Best Boy Ever'. "