Joyce Maynard Quotes

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Teach

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Painter

• 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

  Topics in Challenge

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

  Joyce Maynard

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Portrait

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

  Joyce Maynard

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Silence

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Women, Stories

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Share

• 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

  Topics in Family

• 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.

  Joyce Maynard

  Topics in Love

  Tags in School, Girl

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

  Joyce Maynard

  Topics in Joy

  Tags in Old, Childhood

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

  Joyce Maynard

  Topics in Money

  Tags in Writing, Speak

• 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

  Topics in Experience, Life, Work

• 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

  Topics in God

  Tags in Time, Woman

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

  Joyce Maynard

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Myself, Writer, Realistic

• 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

  Topics in Children, Mother

  Tags in Parents

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Good, Home, End

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Human, Tell, Write

• 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

  Topics in Family, Money

  Tags in Travel

Joyce Maynard (38)

Birth:	5th November, 1953
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Writer

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Today's Anniversary - 28th May

Births

• 1779 - Thomas Moore
• 1947 - Lynn Johnston
• 1949 - Steve King
• 1960 - Marshall Clement Sanford Jr.
• 1911 - Thora Hird

Deaths

• 1843 - Noah Webster
• 2011 - Leo Rangell
• 1981 - Mary Lou Williams
• 2003 - Martha Scott
• 1972 - Violette Leduc