A biography for Joyce Maynardhasn’t been written yet.
“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.”
“The big dramas that fascinate me are the quiet ones that happen behind closed doors in so-called ordinary families.”
“For 25 years, I did take my responsibilities as a pleaser of others sufficiently seriously.”
“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.”
“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.”
“You write about what you know, and you write about what you want to know.”
“One life is not enough for me. I want to go lots of places.”
“My job is writing. I get paid to do it. When was the last time you heard someone challenge a doctor for making money off of cancer?”
“Although Salinger had long since cut me out of his life completely and made it plain that he had nothing but contempt for me, the thought of becoming the object of his wrath was more than I felt ready to take on.”
“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.”
“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!”
“I've had some wonderful successes and some extreme disappointments in my career and my life.”
“I have long observed that the act of writing is viewed, by some, as an elite and otherworldly act, all the more so if a person isn't paid for what she writes.”
“I had known there had been a serial killer on Mount Tamalpais, and it felt so incongruous in such a beautiful, peaceful spot.”
“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.”
“Women writers have been told, forever, that our stories were not valuable. Not as valuable as men's stories about wars, business, power.”
“A person who deserves my loyalty receives it.”
“There is a theme that runs through my work, and that is: the toxic property of keeping secrets.”
“Many women my age have known the experience of giving up crucial parts of themselves to please the man they love.”
“If a man wishes to truly not be written about, he would do well not to write letters to 18-year-old girls, inviting them into his life.”