Top 50 Joyce Maynard Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “It’s not only children who grow. Parents do too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours. I can’t tell my children to reach for the sun. All I can do is reach for it, myself.”

— Joyce Maynard

2. “A person who deserves my loyalty receives it.”

— Joyce Maynard

Featured in: Loyalty Quotes

3. “A good home must be made, not bought.”

— Joyce Maynard

4. “Every child, woman, and man should possess license to speak or sing in his or her true voice.”

— Joyce Maynard

5. “It’s not only children who grow. Parents do too...”

— Joyce Maynard

6. “To share our stories is not only a worthwhile endeavor for the storyteller, but for those who hear our stories and feel less alone because of it.”

— Joyce Maynard

7. “I have long observed that the act of writing is viewed, by some, as an elite and otherworldly act, all the more so if a person isn’t paid for what she writes.”

— Joyce Maynard

8. “The real drug, I came to believe, was love.”

— Joyce Maynard

9. “Imagine if you succeeded in making the world perfect for your children what a shock the rest of life would be for them.”

— Joyce Maynard

10. “A good home must be made, not bought. In the end, it’s not track lighting or a sun room that brings light into a kitchen.”

— Joyce Maynard

11. “She felt everything too deeply, it was like the world was too much for her.”

— Joyce Maynard

12. “Growing up in the fifties and sixties, I can only remember knowing one child, ever, whose parents got a divorce, and hardly any whose mother ‘worked’ at anything besides raising her children.”

— Joyce Maynard

13. “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.”

— Joyce Maynard

14. “Love doesn’t come and go when it’s real. Love is supposed to be constant.”

— Joyce Maynard

15. “I had known there had been a serial killer on Mount Tamalpais, and it felt so incongruous in such a beautiful, peaceful spot.”

— Joyce Maynard

16. “I continued to protect him with my silence.”

— Joyce Maynard

17. “The big dramas that fascinate me are the quiet ones that happen behind closed doors in so-called ordinary families.”

— Joyce Maynard

18. “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.”

— Joyce Maynard

19. “Wherever it is you make your home, there is always this other place, this other person, calling to you. Come to me. Come back.”

— Joyce Maynard

20. “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.”

— Joyce Maynard

21. “The silence was part of the story I wanted to tell.”

— Joyce Maynard

22. “The vehemence with which certain critics have chosen not simply to criticize what I’ve written, but to challenge my writing this story at all, speaks of what the book is about: fear of disapproval.”

— Joyce Maynard

23. “I believe every one of us possesses a fundamental right to tell our own story.”

— Joyce Maynard

24. “The word NO, carries a lot more meaning when spoken by a parent who also knows how to say yes.”

— Joyce Maynard

25. “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.”

— Joyce Maynard

26. “One of the sad realities of being a parent is that the same stuff you know is exciting, educational, and enriching in your child’slife is often messy, smelly and exhausting to deal with.”

— Joyce Maynard

27. “The portrait of my parents is a complicated one, but lovingly drawn.”

— Joyce Maynard

28. “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.”

— Joyce Maynard

29. “At Home in the World is the story of a young woman, raised in some difficult circumstances, and how she survives. It tells a story of redemption, not victimhood.”

— Joyce Maynard

30. “If I told you about all the stories I don’t tell, I would be violating the very boundaries I set for myself.”

— Joyce Maynard

31. “When people ask what I write about, that’s what I tell them: ‘The drama of human relationships.’ I’m not even close to running out of material.”

— Joyce Maynard

32. “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?”

— Joyce Maynard

33. “More than any other setting – more than battlefields or boardrooms or a spaceship headed for intergalactic travel – I’ll put my money on the family to provide an endless source of comedy, tragedy and intrigue.”

— Joyce Maynard

34. “I do not outline. There are writers I know and count as my friends who certainly do it the other way, but for me, part of the adventure is not knowing how it’s going to turn out.”

— Joyce Maynard

35. “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.”

— Joyce Maynard

36. “It troubles me that people speak about writing for money as ugly and distasteful.”

— Joyce Maynard

37. “No, I said. I didn’t remember that. There was so much to remember, sometimes the best thing was to forget.”

— Joyce Maynard

38. “Long after Salinger sent me away, I continued to believe his standards and expectations were the best ones.”

— Joyce Maynard

39. “The painter who feels obligated to depict his subjects as uniformly beautiful or handsome and without flaws will fall short of making art.”

— Joyce Maynard

40. “There is a theme that runs through my work, and that is: the toxic property of keeping secrets.”

— Joyce Maynard

41. “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.”

— Joyce Maynard

42. “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.”

— Joyce Maynard

43. “For 25 years, I did take my responsibilities as a pleaser of others sufficiently seriously.”

— Joyce Maynard

44. “I compromised my ability to tell my story, at the most basic level.”

— Joyce Maynard

45. “I love him,” Patty said. “But our dad is a loser.”

— Joyce Maynard

46. “I think of myself as a realistic writer, not a creator of soap opera or melodrama.”

— Joyce Maynard

47. “Many women my age have known the experience of giving up crucial parts of themselves to please the man they love.”

— Joyce Maynard

48. “Those who rhapsodize about the ease and joy of childhood have perhaps forgotten what it’s like to be 12 years old.”

— Joyce Maynard

49. “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.”

— Joyce Maynard

50. “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.”

— Joyce Maynard