Judith Viorst
Judith Viorst
Judith Viorstis an American writer, newspaper journalist, and psychoanalysis researcher. She is perhaps best known for her children's literature, such as The Tenth Good Thing About Barneyand the Alexander series of short picture books, which includes Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, which has sold over two million copies...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionChildren's Author
Date of Birth3 February 1931
CityNewark, NJ
CountryUnited States of America
There is a time to separate from our mother. But unless we are ready to separate-unless we are ready to leave her and be left-anything is better than separation.
[On writing her first poem at age eight:] An ode to my dead mother and father, who were both alive and pretty pissed off.
If his mother was drowning and I was drowning and he had to choose one of us to save, He says he'd save me.
The need to become a separate self is as urgent as the yearning to merge forever. And as long as we, not our mother, initiate parting, and as long as our mother remains reliably there, it seems possible to risk, and even to revel in, standing alone.
Eventually we will learn that the loss of indivisible love is another of our necessary losses, that loving extends beyond the mother-child pair, that most of the love we receive in this world is love we will have to share--and that sharing begins at home, with our sibling rivals.
We have to divide mother love with our brothers and sisters. Our parents can help us cope with the loss of our dream of absolute love. But they cannot make us believe that we haven't lost it.
Craving that old sweet oneness yet dreading engulfment, wishing to be our mother's and yet be our own, we stormily swing from mood to mood, advancing and retreating-the quintessential model of two-mindedness.
Our father presents an optional set of rhythms and responses for us to connect to. As a second home base, he makes it safer to roam. With him as an ally--a love--it is safer, too, to show that we're mad when we're mad at our mother. We can hate and not be abandoned, hate and still love.
For many men the denial of dependency on their mother is repeated in their subsequent relationships, sometimes by an absence of any sexual interest in women, sometimes by a pattern of loving and leaving them.
Our mother gives us our earliest lessons in love- and its partner, hate. Our father-our "second other"-elaborates on them.
It has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. My mom says some days are like that.
It's true love because if he said quit drinking martinis but I kept on drinking them and the next morning I couldn't get out of bed, he wouldn't tell me he told me.
Superstition is foolish, childish, primitive and irrational -- but how much does it cost you to knock on wood?
Strength is the ability to break a chocolate bar into four pieces with your bare hands - and then eat just one of those pieces.