Judith Viorst Quotes

57 Sourced Quotes

For many men the denial of dependency on their mother is repeated in their subsequent relationships, sometimes by an absence of any sexual interest in women, sometimes by a pattern of loving and leaving them.

Judith Viorst
The need to become a separate self is as urgent as the yearning to merge forever. And as long as we, not our mother, initiate parting, and as long as our mother remains reliably there, it seems possible to risk, and even to revel in, standing alone.

Judith Viorst
Many of us are done with adolescence before we are done with adolescent love.

Judith Viorst
Friends broaden our horizons. They serve as new models with whom we can identify. They allow us to be ourselves-and accept us that way. They enhance our self-esteem because they think we're okay, because we matter to them. And because they matter to us-for various reasons, at various levels of intensity-they enrich the quality of our emotional life.

Judith Viorst
Brevity may be the soul of wit, but not when someone's saying, 'I love you.'

Judith Viorst
Though we march in demonstrations,
Write checks to fight injustice and disease,
Defend the wetlands, ozone layer, and whales,
The whole world's in a terrible mess.
Yet we persevere nevertheless because
We can't let it get any worse,
And the world would become even worse,
The world would be a lot worse
If we stopped trying.

Judith Viorst
I had it together on Sunday. By Monday at noon it had cracked. On Tuesday debris Was descending on me. And by Wednesday no part was intact. On Thursday I picked up some pieces. On Friday I picked up the rest. By Saturday, late, It was almost set straight. And on Sunday the world was impressed With how well I had got it together.

Judith Viorst
Losing is the price we pay for living. It is also the source of much of our growth and gain.

Judith Viorst
Our daily existence requires both closeness and distance, the wholeness of self, the wholeness of intimacy.

Judith Viorst
I made him swear he'd always tell me nothing but the truth.
I promised him I never would resent it.
No matter how unbearable, how harsh, how cruel. How come
He thought I meant it?

Judith Viorst
Close friends contribute to our personal growth. They also contribute to our personal pleasure, making the music sound sweeter, the wine taste richer, the laughter ring louder because they are there.

Judith Viorst
A normal adolescent isn't a normal adolescent if he acts normal.

Judith Viorst
It is true that the present is powerfully shaped by the past. But it is also true that circumstances of every stage of development can shake up and revise the old arrangements. And it's true that insight at any age keeps us from singing the same sad songs again.

Judith Viorst
Being in love is better than being in jail, a dentist's chair, or a holding pattern over Philadelphia, but not if he doesn't love you back.

Judith Viorst
Nobody has to pay me to be nervous.
I've always done it as a volunteer.
I do it as a kind of public service
That draws upon my expertise in fear.

Judith Viorst
The lives we lead are determined, for better and worse, by our loss experiences.

Judith Viorst
No-fault guilt: This is when, instead of trying to figure out who's to blame, everyone pays.

Judith Viorst
It's true love because
If he said quit drinking martinis but I kept on drinking them and the next morning I couldn't get out of bed,
He wouldn't tell me he told me.

Judith Viorst
I think I could do the middle fifties just fine,
Like that actress who, when asked how she could be fifty-four when her son was forty-eight,
Replied, 'My son lives his life, and I live mine.'

Judith Viorst
Not listening is probably the commonest unkindness of married life, and one that creates — more devastatingly than an eternity of forgotten birthdays and misguided Christmas gifts — an atmosphere of not loving and not caring.

Judith Viorst
If his mother was drowning and I was drowning and he had to choose one of us to save, He says he'd save me.

Judith Viorst
Still married after all these years?
No mystery.
We are each other's habit,
And each other's history.

Judith Viorst
As we acquire new aches and new pains, our health care is, of necessity, being supplied by internists, cardiologists, dermatologists, podiatrists, urologists, periodontists, gynecologists and psychiatrists, from all of whom we want a second opinion. We want a second opinion that says, don't worry, you are going to live forever.

Judith Viorst
Suffering makes you deep. Travel makes you broad. In case I get my pick, I'd rather travel.

Judith Viorst
We begin life with loss. We are cast from the womb without an apartment, a charge plate, a job or a car. We are sucking, sobbing, clinging, helpless babies.

Judith Viorst
With four walk-in closets to walk in,
Three bushes, two shrubs, and one tree,
The suburbs are good for the children,
But no place for grown-ups to be.

Judith Viorst
When you're writing stories, you take pieces of reality and pieces of imagination and you put them all in a container like a kaleidoscope and you shake them up, and then you turn the bottom the way you do in a kaleidoscope until its the pattern that you want.

Judith Viorst