Ayelet Waldman Short Quotes

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Courage is impulsive; it is narcissism tempered with nihilism.

Ayelet Waldman
Whatever my intentions, whatever the truth of my claim, I had no business giving a lecture to a total stranger.

Ayelet Waldman
There is an inverse correlation between the cleanliness of a bathroom and my 3-year-old daughter's need to move her bowels.

Ayelet Waldman
I tend to approach giving interviews with the same sense of circumspection and restraint as I approach my writing. That is to say, virtually none.

Ayelet Waldman
Why are the architects of the family-values agenda so eager to punish into the next generation? What is being served by seeking, quite literally, a tooth for a tooth?

Ayelet Waldman
Personally, I think four is the perfect number of children for our particular family. Four is enough to create the frenzied cacophony that my husband and I find so joyful.

Ayelet Waldman
You can take the babushka off the Jewish mother and dress her up in a pair of Seven jeans and Marc Jacobs sling-backs, but she's still going to expect a passel of grandkids.

Ayelet Waldman
One of the darkest, deepest shames so many of us mothers feel nowadays is our fear that we are Bad Mothers, that we are failing our children and falling far short of our own ideals.

Ayelet Waldman
Let's all commit ourselves to the basic civility of minding our own business. Failing that, let's go back to a time when we were nasty and judgmental, but only behind one another's backs.

Ayelet Waldman
By presenting a faithful and honest record of my experience as a mother, I hope to show both my readers and my children how truth can redeem even what you fear might be the gravest of sins.

Ayelet Waldman
I always tell my kids that as soon as you have a secret, something about you that you are ashamed to have others find out, you have given other people the power to hurt you by exposing you.

Ayelet Waldman
The Jews I knew growing up didn't do "do-it-yourself." When my father needed to hammer something he generally used his shoe, and the only real tool he owned was a pair of needle-nose pliers.

Ayelet Waldman
Aborting my baby is the most serious of the many maternal crimes I tally in my head when I am at my lowest, when the Bad Mother label seems to fit best. Rocketship was my baby. And I killed him.

Ayelet Waldman
I'd written personal essays before, but never on this scale — never so often and with such, er, honesty. (If by honesty I mean slashing my wrists and hemorrhaging all over the computer screen).

Ayelet Waldman