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I expend far too much of my maternal energies on guilt and regret.


Ayelet Waldman

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Like the protagonist of her 2006 novel, 'Love and Other Impossible Pursuits,' Ayelet Waldman...
KATIE HAFNER Guilt is regret for what we’ve done. Regret is guilt for what we didn’t do.
MARK AMEND Part of my drive was guilt. I felt if I did not demonstrate my feelings toward nonviolence and civil...
DAVID SCOTT All negativity is caused by an accumulation of psychological time and denial of the present. Unease,...
ECKHART TOLLE I spend far too much time on eBay buying lamps and upholstery remnants.
HEIDI JULAVITS When my first daughter was born, my husband held her in his hands and said, 'My God, she's s...
AYELET WALDMAN Where would the memoir be without bipolar writers? I mean, that's what - that whole oversharing ...
AYELET WALDMAN I am an adamant feminist. It never occurred to me to take my husband's name when we married. I a...
AYELET WALDMAN There are times as a parent when you realize that your job is not to be the parent you always imagin...
AYELET WALDMAN I learned that I suffered from bipolar II disorder, a less serious variant of bipolar I, which was o...
AYELET WALDMAN I hate homework. I hate it more now than I did when I was the one lugging textbooks and binders back...
AYELET WALDMAN Everyone knows now how early a fetus becomes a baby. Women who have been pregnant have seen their ba...
AYELET WALDMAN The capacity for extravagant emotion that my husband finds so attractive in me can be exhausting, es...
AYELET WALDMAN Roaring like a tiger turns some children into pianists who debut at Carnegie Hall but only crushes o...
AYELET WALDMAN It's a good life in this sort of Madame Bovary way. It's beautiful and perfect and seems to be just ...
AYELET WALDMAN It was a group of two dozen women arrayed around this living room. Four were on my side, and the res...
AYELET WALDMAN Usually I try not to read that stuff. For someone who writes openly about her life, I have the thinn...
AYELET WALDMAN Names are important in terms of how you construct your characters' identity, ... But the First Amend...
AYELET WALDMAN No author loves the idea of not choosing his or her characters' names, ... Mommy Track Mystery.
AYELET WALDMAN If they want to be someone who is not loathsome, they'll have to wait till the next book.
AYELET WALDMAN They can be either a freshman at UC San Diego with one too many piercings or a far-too-perfect South...
AYELET WALDMAN I've always written about maternal ambivalence. It's the subject that consumes me.
AYELET WALDMAN I wrote three novels in six months, with a clarity of focus and attention to detail that I had never...
AYELET WALDMAN I have two daughters and I have done everything in my power to prevent them from assimilating, even ...
AYELET WALDMAN I went from resenting my mother-in-law to accepting her, finally to appreciating her. What appeared ...
AYELET WALDMAN Yes, I have four children. Four children with whom I spend a good part of every day: bathing them, c...
AYELET WALDMAN I tell myself that after four children my belly is already so stretched and flabby that I have to do...
AYELET WALDMAN The thing about youthful offenders is that no one seems to care about them. Most people don't li...
AYELET WALDMAN I used to refer to myself as a 'theoretical anorexic,' just as crazy when it came to body im...
AYELET WALDMAN Before I was married, I didn't consider my failure to manage even basic hand tools a feminist in...
AYELET WALDMAN In a perfect world, probably we'd never yell, we'd just be firm and dispassionate. But of co...
AYELET WALDMAN By the time the children go to bed, I am as drained as any mother who has spent her day working, car...
AYELET WALDMAN I had a second trimester abortion. I was pregnant with a much-wanted child who was diagnosed with a ...
AYELET WALDMAN Another parent's different approach raises the possibility that you've made a mistake with y...
AYELET WALDMAN The Q I loathe and despise, the Q every single writer I know loathes and despises, is this one: '...
AYELET WALDMAN As a novelist, I mined my history, my family and my memory, but in a very specific way. Writing fict...
AYELET WALDMAN I tend to approach giving interviews with the same sense of circumspection and restraint as I approa...
AYELET WALDMAN But I really feel strongly that our kids do way too much homework. The research is on my side. It...
AYELET WALDMAN If a good mother is one who loves her child more than anyone else in the world, I am not a good moth...
AYELET WALDMAN A good mother remembers to serve fruit at breakfast, is always cheerful and never yells, manages not...
AYELET WALDMAN If only shame were a reliable engine for behavior modification. All it does is make me feel bad, whi...
AYELET WALDMAN Gym class was, of course, where the strongest, best-looking kids were made captains and chose us spa...
AYELET WALDMAN I wish I could view the belly that oozes over the top of my pants as a badge of maternal honor. I do...
AYELET WALDMAN My father is sure that Israel keeps the Holocaust from happening again. I worry that it might hasten...
AYELET WALDMAN I pity the young woman who will attempt to insinuate herself between my mama's boy and me. I sym...
AYELET WALDMAN Even if i'm setting myself up for failure, I think it's worth trying to be a mother who delights in ...
AYELET WALDMAN Listen to the pregnant woman. Value her. She values the life growing inside her. Listen to the pregn...
AYELET WALDMAN I mean, I do actually think there is a qualitative difference between aborting in the early part of ...
AYELET WALDMAN Is Valentine's Day a day to make cupcakes with your children? No, Valentine's is supposed to...
AYELET WALDMAN Despite the fact that in America we incarcerate more juveniles for life terms than in any other coun...
AYELET WALDMAN I was born in Israel, to Canadian parents. My father immigrated in 1948, part of a wave of young men...
AYELET WALDMAN I've sometimes thought that it's only by recalling that desperate devotion my kids once felt...
AYELET WALDMAN Most writers spend their lives standing a little apart from the crowd, watching and listening and ho...
AYELET WALDMAN During the periods in my marriage when I chose to stay home with my kids rather than work as an atto...
AYELET WALDMAN The biggest challenge for any craft person or artist is to accept the constraints of their medium an...
AYELET WALDMAN I always tell my kids that as soon as you have a secret, something about you that you are ashamed to...
AYELET WALDMAN In every union roles are assumed, some traditional, some not. My husband used to pay his own bills, ...
AYELET WALDMAN Because of my bipolar disorder, I tend to these mixed states, which are depressed but loud and agita...
AYELET WALDMAN I mean, I absolutely call myself a feminist. And by that, I mean a woman who believes that your oppo...
AYELET WALDMAN I'm too busy putting my energies into my performance to be a diva.
SHIRLEY BASSEY I love fresh flowers for my home. I spend far too much money on them, buying them almost every day.
BILLIE PIPER For much of my life, I existed in a condition of regret, a regret that was contemporaneous with expe...
GREG BAXTER I enjoy my own company far too much to just hang out with anybody
MEG NEZAJ Of course there are regrets. I shall regret always that I found my own authentic voice in politics. ...
JOHN MAJOR There are two kinds of guilt: the kind that drowns you until you’re useless, and the kind that fir...
SABAA TAHIR Trust too much
Hope too much
Love way too much
Take the pain.
Because regret hur...
JAMIE HOLT SHERFY The British feel of blues has been hard, rather than emotional. Far too much emphasis on 12 bar, too...
ALEXIS KORNER Always be truthful and you will have fewer visits from regret, guilt or fear.
SUZY KASSEM My God, I could raise a family of six children and hold down a full-time job with all the energy I e...
ELIZABETH WURTZEL I acknowledge my guilt on this charge.
DAVID IRVING I expend a lot of energy in my 50-60 minutes of cardio and strength training every day.
DAVID H. MURDOCK They teach in academies far too many things, and far too much that is useless.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE They teach in academies far too many things, and far too much that is useless.
JOHANN VON GOETHE They teach in academies far too many things, and far too much that is useless.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE We always regret our bad actions, it just gives us a huge amount of guilt afterwards.
NIRVIK PARAJULI I think every parent, every generation has wanted their children to do better and have a higher stan...
PHIL MCGRAW DAD: Why didn't you say this when it happened?
ME: It's complicated.
Don't they know that ...
A.S. KING Nothing destroys authority so much as the unequal and untimely interchange of power, pressed too far...
FRANCIS BACON He felt weighted down by guilt and regret for what might have been his last words to all of them.
KAREN ANN WIRTZ I think every parent, every generation has wanted their children to do better and have a higher stan...
PHIL MCGRAW It is with great regret that I hereby resign my position. I have learned a lot and contribute much o...
ALLEN CLARK And the pain is too much it's too much it's too much and my hands are on my head and I'm rearing bac...
PATRICK NESS My perception of your beauty was far more erotic than your real beauty! Am I to be blamed for taking...
RAMANA PEMMARAJU My only regret is that I signed away the world rights and in America they've been far and away my mo...
JONATHAN COE There was no admission of guilt in making a gesture of that kind. That was a gesture on my behalf be...
COLIN MONTGOMERIE I cannot in good conscience ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explai...
VAN JONES I was brought up in the shadow of the Holocaust. My mother lost most of her family, and I didn't...
NAOMI BENARON The elimination diet:
Remove anger, regret, resentment, guilt, blame, and worry.
Then watc...
CHARLES F. GLASSMAN There is far too much law for those who can afford it and far too little for those who cannot.
DEREK BOK Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energ...
KATHERINE MANSFIELD Nothing destroys authority more than the unequal and untimely interchange of power stretched too far...
FRANCIS BACON Nothing destroys authority more than the unequal and untimely interchange of power stretched too far...
FRANCIS BACON SR. I rarely regret my action but I often regret my inaction.
AVINA CELESTE But far more numerous was the herd of such, Who think too little, and who talk too much.
JOHN DRYDEN But far more numerous was the herd of such, Who think too little, and who talk too much.
JOHN DRYDEN I know I chatter on far too much... but if you only knew how many things I want to say and don't. Gi...
L.M. MONTGOMERY My maternal desires are fully satisfied with my dogs.
ELISABETTA CANALIS Entire ignorance is not so terrible or extreme an evil, and is far from being the greatest of all; t...
PLATO I believe I was extremely greedy, and that I lost my moral compass, and I've done terrible things th...
ANDREW FASTOW I always have a very complex personal life as far as romance goes. Sometimes I have a little too muc...
EMILY MEADE

More Ayelet Waldman

When my first daughter was born, my husband held her in his hands and said, 'My God, she's s...
AYELET WALDMAN Where would the memoir be without bipolar writers? I mean, that's what - that whole oversharing ...
AYELET WALDMAN I am an adamant feminist. It never occurred to me to take my husband's name when we married. I a...
AYELET WALDMAN There are times as a parent when you realize that your job is not to be the parent you always imagin...
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