Joyce Maynard Quotes

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Joyce Maynard

Profession : Writer

Birth : November 5, 1953

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

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.

Joyce Maynard

Teach a child to play solitaire, and she'll be able to entertain herself when there's no one around. Teach her tennis, and she'll know what to do when she's on a court. But raise her to feel comfortable in nature, and the whole planet is her home.

Joyce Maynard

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.

Joyce Maynard

I continued to protect him with my silence.

Joyce Maynard

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

Joyce Maynard

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.

Joyce Maynard

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?

Joyce Maynard

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

Joyce Maynard

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.

Joyce Maynard

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.

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?

Joyce Maynard

The vehemence with which certain critics have chosen not simply to criticize what I've written, but to challenge my writing this story at all, speaks of what the book is about: fear of disapproval.

Joyce Maynard

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.

Joyce Maynard

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.

Joyce Maynard

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

Joyce Maynard

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

Joyce Maynard

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.

Joyce Maynard

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

Joyce Maynard

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.

Joyce Maynard