Joyce Maynard Quotes

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Joyce Maynard

Profession : Writer

Birth : November 5, 1953

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

Joyce Maynard

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

Joyce Maynard

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

Joyce Maynard

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.

Joyce Maynard

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.

Joyce Maynard

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.

Joyce Maynard

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

Joyce Maynard

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.

Joyce Maynard

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

Joyce Maynard

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

Joyce Maynard

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!

Joyce Maynard

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.

Joyce Maynard

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.

Joyce Maynard

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

Joyce Maynard

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

Joyce Maynard

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

Joyce Maynard

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

Joyce Maynard

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

Joyce Maynard

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

Joyce Maynard

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

Joyce Maynard