As a novelist, I mined my history, my family and my memory, but in a very specific way. Writing fiction, I never made use of experiences immediately as they happened. I needed to let things fester in my memory, mature and transmogrify into something meaningful. – Ayelet Waldman
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. – Ayelet Waldman
There are times as a parent when you realize that your job is not to be the parent you always imagined youd be, the parent you always wished you had. Your job is to be the parent your child needs, given the particulars of his or her own life and nature. – Ayelet Waldman
I pity the young woman who will attempt to insinuate herself between my mamas boy and me. I sympathize with the monumental nature of her task. It will take a crowbar, two bulldozers and half a dozen Molotov cocktails to pry my Oedipus and me loose from one another. – Ayelet Waldman