Ayelet Waldman Quotes

If you focus all of your emotional passion on your children and you neglect the relationship that brought that family into existence... eventually, things can go really, really wrong.

Courage is impulsive; it is narcissism tempered with nihilism.

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.

If a good mother is one who loves her child more than anyone else in the world, I am not a good mother. I am in fact a bad mother. I love my husband more than I love my children.

Roaring like a tiger turns some children into pianists who debut at Carnegie Hall but only crushes others. Coddling gives some the excuse to fail and others the chance to succeed.

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.

For a couple of months there I was shrieking like a banshee.

In a perfect world I think we would microdose with LSD instead of giving teenagers Adderall. But I'd like to see it studied first.

Why is it that loving something provides such little protection from betrayal?

By the time the children go to bed, I am as drained as any mother who has spent her day working, car pooling, building Lego castles and shopping for the precisely correct soccer cleat.

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.

In a perfect world, probably we'd never yell, we'd just be firm and dispassionate. But of course, everyone yells at their children.

Listen to the pregnant woman. Value her. She values the life growing inside her. Listen to the pregnant woman, and you cannot help but defend her right to abortion.

I love my husband more than I love my children.

The only difference between a writer and someone who wants to be a writer is discipline.

I'm sure there are people who survive tragedy without humor, but I've never met any of them. Nor would I be particularly interested in writing about them if I did meet them.

Is Valentine's Day a day to make cupcakes with your children? No, Valentine's is supposed to be a day about romantic love.

In fact if I see you drinking I'll come down on you like a ton of bricks and call your mom.

It's incredibly important to me that my children don't put anything in their bodies that they haven't tested first - that's how you end up dying.

You know, I feel like my job is to write a book. Then filmmakers come and they make a movie. And they're two really different art forms.

I really hate alcohol. I hate it because it's linked so closely to sexual assault in our culture.

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.

My kids are incredibly secure. More and more of their friends' parents are divorcing, but my kids have absolute confidence that we'll stay together forever. That goes a long, long way.

The idea that [Jeff Sessions] is the man who is going to end the progress on the drug war makes me want to rip my hair out, every carefully nurtured curl on my head.

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.

I just don't have a lick of optimism left in me.

Well, you know, I was raised by a 1970s feminist. My mom had a consciousness-raising group. I used to sit at the top of the stairs and listen to them.

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

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).

I was terrified of LSD. I don't want to get arrested.

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?

I’ve sometimes thought that it’s only by recalling that desperate devotion my kids once felt for me that I can maintain my own desperate devotion in the face of their adolescent sneering.

I was a federal public defender during the most important years of the drug war. I saw people go to jail for nothing, and go to jail for a long time.

Being a public defender makes you incredibly paranoid - and I would say with reason - about law enforcement.

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

What I do with my kids is - and I think they probably do ignore us - is No Alcohol. If they're drunk they will be grounded for time immemorial.

If producing a regular column is living out loud, then keeping a daily blog is living at the top of your lungs. For a couple of months there, I was shrieking like a banshee.

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.

Here are my Mommy Messages: Wear a condom and test your Molly.

I went from resenting my mother-in-law to accepting her, finally to appreciating her. What appeared to be her diffidence when I was first married, I now value as serenity.

There is no fundamental truth and there's nothing to be connected to: I just believe that [LSD] makes you feel better.

That connection between hormones and mood is so important to get a handle on, and it's also really important when you're considering taking medication.

I've never really been interested in recreational drug use.

I smoked pot when I was a teenager because other kids were doing it, but I didn't enjoy it that much.

Nothing makes me roll my eyes faster than a "Coexist" bumper sticker.

States began to realize how much money they were spending on incarceration and how much money they were spending fighting this ludicrous war on drugs that was actually counterproductive.

The thing I believe in most in the world is my own fallibility, so I am willing to believe that I may be wrong too.

The biggest challenge for any craft person or artist is to accept the constraints of their medium and make something beautiful despite them. That's kind of fun, actually.

If God were like a Star Wars Force linking all consciousness, I supposed I could maybe believe that. But let's just say I'm not going to be running off to India to join an ashram anytime soon.

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.