Quotes by Ayelet Waldman

About Ayelet Waldman:

Ayelet Waldman is an Israeli American novelist and essayist. She has written seven mystery novels in the series The Mommy-Track Mysteries and three other novels. She has also written autobiographical essays about motherhood. Waldman spent three years working as a federal public defender and her fiction draws on her experience as a lawyer.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

I mean, I absolutely call myself a feminist. And by that, I mean a woman who believes that your opportunities should not be constrained by your gender, that women should be entitled to the same opportunities as men.

Ayelet Waldman

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.

Ayelet Waldman

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

Ayelet Waldman

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

Ayelet Waldman

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.

Ayelet Waldman

I used to refer to myself as a 'theoretical anorexic,' just as crazy when it came to body image, but saved by a lack of self-discipline. My daughters do everything better than I do - they're smarter, more beautiful, happier. What if they end up bette...

Ayelet Waldman

I hate homework. I hate it more now than I did when I was the one lugging textbooks and binders back and forth from school. The hour my children are seated at the kitchen table, their books spread out before them, the crumbs of their after-school sna...

Ayelet Waldman

I think I wish I had never spanked my children, but I have. And they remember every instance like they tattooed it on their palms. I think it's a terrible lesson, to use physical punishment to make a point about not behaving, not being kind to their ...

Ayelet Waldman

The first inkling my husband had that I was thinking about suicide was when he checked my blog.

Ayelet Waldman

In every union roles are assumed, some traditional, some not. My husband used to pay his own bills, I used to call my own repairman. But as marriages progress, you surrender areas of your own competence, often without even knowing it.

Ayelet Waldman

I had a second trimester abortion. I was pregnant with a much-wanted child who was diagnosed with a genetic abnormality. I made a choice to terminate the pregnancy. It was my third pregnancy, and I was very obviously showing. More important, I could ...

Ayelet Waldman

I tend to approach giving interviews with the same sense of circumspection and restraint as I approach my writing. That is to say, virtually none. When asked what I made of blogs like my own, blogs written by parents about their children, I said, 'A ...

Ayelet Waldman

I am consumed, or I have been consumed, with these issues of motherhood and the way we act out societal expectations and roles. So both my nonfiction and my fiction have been pretty much exclusively about that.

Ayelet Waldman

I learned that I suffered from bipolar II disorder, a less serious variant of bipolar I, which was once known as manic depression. The information was naturally frightening; up to 1 in 5 people with bipolar disorder will commit suicide, and rates may...

Ayelet Waldman

I wrote three novels in six months, with a clarity of focus and attention to detail that I had never before experienced. This type of sublime creative energy is characteristic of the elevated and productive mood state known as hypomania.

Ayelet Waldman

There's nothing I find quite as annoying as the phrase 'I told you so.'

Ayelet Waldman

My father is sure that Israel keeps the Holocaust from happening again. I worry that it might hasten its recurrence.

Ayelet Waldman

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.

Ayelet Waldman

Because of my bipolar disorder, I tend to these mixed states, which are depressed but loud and agitated. So I can be terribly irritable. I go to cognitive behavioral therapy in order not to yell at my children.

Ayelet Waldman

The capacity for extravagant emotion that my husband finds so attractive in me can be exhausting, especially to a child. My moods are mercurial, and this can be terrifying. I know, because I was a daughter of a mother with a changeable temperament.

Ayelet Waldman

If only shame were a reliable engine for behavior modification. All it does is make me feel bad, which inspires me to bust open a bag of cheese popcorn, which then makes me feel crappy about my weight.

Ayelet Waldman

Author Bio

  • NameAyelet Waldman
  • DescriptionAmerican writer
  • BornDecember 11, 1964
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionNovelist
  • WorksLove And Other Impossible Pursuits