For 25 years, I did take my responsibilities as a pleaser of others sufficiently seriously.
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.
I believed my story would be helpful to young women my daughter’s age, who are still in the process of forming themselves as women, and in need of encouragement to remain true to themselves.
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?
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.
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.
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.
I have no doubt that over the years my children will find plenty of things about me to criticize. But something tells me that twenty years from now not one of them will sit on some therapist’s couch complaining because their mother didn’t spend enough time vacuuming up glitter.
Not only did I avoid speaking of Salinger; I resisted thinking about him. I did not reread his letters to me. The experience had been too painful.
Every child, woman, and man should possess license to speak or sing in his or her true voice.
No, I said. I didn’t remember that. There was so much to remember, sometimes the best thing was to forget.
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.
Love doesn’t come and go when it’s real. Love is supposed to be constant.
Ava never used the phrase “have a dog.” A relationship with a dog was a mutual one, with no ownership. Most human beings were unlikely to ever experience – even with a lover, a parent, or a child – the kind of unconditional acceptance and devotion a dog will offer to the human in his or her life.
Friends. There’s a loaded word for you. I know some people, when speaking of a particular relationship, may say “we’re just friends,” as if this were some lesser form of connection to that of lovers or so-called soul mates. But to me, there may be no bond that matters more, in the end, than friendship. True and enduring friendship. Alice.
I love him,” Patty said. “But our dad is a loser.
Carla always says, “I don’t like risks.” In Greg’s opinion, there’s no way to avoid them. It’s just a matter of whether you choose dangerous action or dangerous inaction.
She never gave up adoring our father, but he ceased to be, for her, the larger-than-life hero I continued to make him into. For Patty, he was more like a deeply lovable spaniel who keeps peeing on the rug and chewing on the upholstery, no matter how many times you tell him not to.
They seemed to arrive at some form of friendship. Maybe they were like a couple of weary soldiers who went through a war together, side by side in the trenches, and having no inclination to relive the old battles found a certain comfort in the simple knowledge that they’d been young together and present at the same terrible moments of bloodshed. Even though, in their case the injury sustained there was my mother’s t the hands of my father.
How does it happen that a person with whom you have shared your most intimate moments – greatest love, greatest pain, joy, also grief – can become a stranger?
Those times a person feels most afraid for their life? Those are the times you know you’re alive.