Quotes By Joyce Maynard

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?

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

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.

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

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 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.

Some literary types subscribe to the notion that being a writer like Salinger entitles a person to remain free of the standards that might apply to mere mortals.

The silence was part of the story I wanted to tell.

When I was 12 years old, I read 'Nancy Drew' mysteries and biographies of Madame Curie and Florence Nightingale and books about girls who love horses or go to nursing school. I belonged to the Girl Scouts and got A's in school and rarely disobeyed my parents. I still kept a collection of Barbie dolls in my room, and I almost never spoke to boys.

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

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

The painter who feels obligated to depict his subjects as uniformly beautiful or handsome and without flaws will fall short of making art.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

The portrait of my parents is a complicated one, but lovingly drawn.

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

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.

A person who deserves my loyalty receives it.