106 Quotes by Joyce Maynard

There is something about the act of studying an unclothed body, as an artist does, that allows a person to appreciate it as pure form, regardless of the kinds of traits traditionally regarded as imperfections. In a figure drawing class, an obese woman's folds of flesh take on a kind of beauty. You can look at a man's shrunken chest or legs or buttocks with tenderness. Age is not ugly, just poignant.

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.

I tried to think of what my father would tell me. 'Don't let any boy give you shit.' But he'd never said how we should go about preventing this.

Not all at once, but gradually, over the months, another revelation came to me: None of that other stuff, much as I'd loved it, was what made a marriage. Not restaurant dinners or romantic vacations. Not walks on the beach or visits to wine country in the Boxster. Not oysters and martinis or moonlight over the Bay Bridge.""This was a marriage. As uncomfortable and inconvenient and devastating as it might be to live as we did now, we inhabited this place together.

Not until we learned of his illness, and we walked the path of that terrible struggle together, did I understand what it meant to be a couple - to be a true partner and to have one. I learned the full meaning of marriage only as mine was drawing to a close. I discovered what love was as mine departed the world. This is our story.

A person who deserves my loyalty receives it.

Ten years from now, her mother might not even recognize her. Already she was different, but the day would come when she'd be this person her mother had never seen. There would be other people - someone like Carolyn or Alan, or even Violet - who had known her longer than her mother ever did.

It seems the myth survives in our culture still, that a young girl’s worth, measured against that of a great man, may be of lesser consequence… I would say rather that a man who treats those offering up their love and trust as expendable is lesser himself for having done so. There is art, and there are artists. Let’s not confuse the two.

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