Judith Viorst > Quotes

“Strength is the capacity to break a Hershey bar into four pieces with your bare hands - and then eat just one of the pieces.”
― Judith Viorst, Love and Guilt and the Meaning of Life, Etc.

“I think I'll move to Australia.”
― Judith Viorst, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

“I went to sleep with gum in my mouth and now there's gum in my hair and when I got out of bed this morning I tripped on the skateboard and by mistake I dropped my sweater in the sink while the water was running and I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.”
― Judith Viorst, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

“Some days are like that. Even in Australia.”
― Judith Viorst, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

“I had it together on Sunday.
By Monday at noon it had cracked.
On Tuesday debris
Was descending on me.
And by Wednesday no part was intact.
On Thursday I picked up some pieces.
On Friday I picked up the rest.
By Saturday, late,
It was almost set straight.
And on Sunday the world was impressed
With how well I had got it together.”
― Judith Viorst, Suddenly Sixty: And Other Shocks of Later Life

“Superstition is foolish, childish, primitive and irrational, but how much does it cost you to knock on wood?”
― Judith Viorst

“Infatuation is when you think he's as sexy as Robert Redford, as smart as Henry Kissinger, as noble as Ralph Nader, as funny as Woody Allen, and as athletic as Jimmy Conners. Love is when you realize that he's as sexy as Woody Allen, as smart as Jimmy Connors, as funny as Ralph Nader, as athletic as Henry Kissinger and nothing like Robert Redford - but you'll take him anyway.”
― Judith Viorst Redbook 1975

“Levamos para o casamento uma infinidade de expectativas ro- mânticas. As vezes, também visões de míticos êxtases sexuais. E impomos à nossa vida sexual muitas outras expectativas, muitos outros "devia ser", que o ato quotidiano do amor não consegue realizar. A terra devia tremer. Nossos ossos deviam cantar. Fogos de artifício deviam explodir. O ser consciente — o eu — devia ser queimado na pira do amor. Devíamos alcançar o paraíso, ou um fac-símile razoável. Nós nos desapontamos.”
― Judith Viorst, Necessary Losses: The Loves, Illusions, Dependencies, and Impossible Expectations That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Grow

“We each are artists of the self, creating a collage -- a new and original work of art -- out of scraps and fragments of identifications. The people with whom we identify are, positively or negatively, always important to us. Our feelings toward them are, in some way, always intense.”
― Judith Viorst, Necessary Losses: The Loves, Illusions, Dependencies, and Impossible Expectations That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Grow

“It's only when you love him that you hate him.”
― Judith Viorst

“I hope the next time you get a double-decker strawberry ice-cream cone the ice cream part falls off the cone and lands in Australia.”
― Judith Viorst

“It was a terrible horrible no good very bad day”
― Judith Viorst

“It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.”
― Judith Viorst, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

“There comes a time when we aren't allowed not to know.”
― Judith Viorst, Necessary Losses: The Loves, Illusions, Dependencies, and Impossible Expectations That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Grow

“There is no ache more Deadly than the striving to be oneself. —Yevgeniy Vinokurov”
― Judith Viorst, Necessary Losses: The Loves, Illusions, Dependencies, and Impossible Expectations That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Grow

“It is the image in the mind that binds us to our lost treasures, but it is the loss that shapes the image. —Colette”
― Judith Viorst, Necessary Losses: The Loves, Illusions, Dependencies, and Impossible Expectations That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Grow

“Why did the chicken cross the road?”
― Judith Viorst, Lulu Is Getting a Sister: (Who WANTS Her? Who NEEDS Her?)

“It doesn’t even matter if they out-and-out abhor me, Because when I am done with them, they’ll totally adore me.”
― Judith Viorst, Lulu Is Getting a Sister: (Who WANTS Her? Who NEEDS Her?)

“Infantile love follows the principle ‘I love because I am loved.’ “Mature love follows the principle ‘I am loved because I love.’ “Immature love says ‘I love you because I need you.’ “Mature love says ‘I need you because I love you.”
― Judith Viorst, Necessary Losses: The Loves, Illusions, Dependencies, and Impossible Expectations That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Grow

“Lasts I want all of my lasts to be with you. —ANONYMOUS Wouldn’t I linger with you till the sky had turned black If this was the very last sunset we’d ever see? Wouldn’t desire be trumping that pain in my back If this was the last time that you could make love to me? Would I complain you were stepping all over my toes If this was the last of the dances we’d ever dance? And wouldn’t I travel wherever the highway goes, If you traveled with me and this was our last chance?”
― Judith Viorst, Nearing Ninety: And Other Comedies of Late Life

“Indeed, analyst Robert Bak calls orgasm "the perfect promise between love and death," the means by which we repatriate separation of mother and child through the momentary extinction of the self. It is true that few of us consciously climb into a lover's bed in the hope of finding our mommy between the sheets. But the sexual loss of our separateness (which may scare people so badly they cannot have orgasm) brings us pleasure, in part, because it unconsciously repeats our first connection.”
― Judith Viorst, Necessary Losses: The Loves, Illusions, Dependencies, and Impossible Expectations That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Grow

“Responsável significa, naturalmente, amarrar o próprio sapato. Mas significa também não ter permissão para culpar uma infância terrível — ou uma paixão, uma tentação, uma ignorância ou uma inocência — por atos que são nossos, por ações que realmente praticamos. Pois se, na realidade, as praticamos, somos responsáveis.”
― Judith Viorst, Perdas Necessárias

“Um modo de não sentir falta, está claro, consiste em ficar em casa, não sair, embora nem sempre precise admitir que não sai. Pois, embora alguns jovens se agarrem abertamente à família, há aqueles que, com uma grande demonstração de independência, descobrem um modo de jamais sair de casa.”
― Judith Viorst, Perdas Necessárias

“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.”
― Judith Viorst

“My Father, the Age I Am Now Time, which diminishes all things, increases understanding for the aging. —PLUTARCH My mother was the star: Smart and funny and warm, A patient listener and an easy laugher. My father was . . . an accountant: Not one to look up to, Ask advice from, Confide in. A man of few words. We faulted him—my mother, my sister, and I, For being this dutiful, uninspiring guy Who never missed a day of work, Or wondered what our dreams were. Just . . . an accountant. Decades later, My mother dead, my sister dead, My father, the age I am now, Planning ahead in his so-accountant way, Sent me, for my records, Copies of his will, his insurance policies, And assorted other documents, including The paid receipt for his cemetery plot, The paid receipt for his tombstone, And the words that he had chosen for his stone. And for the first time, shame on me, I saw my father: Our family’s prime provider, only provider. A barely-out-of-boyhood married man Working without a safety net through the Depression years That marked him forever, Terrified that maybe he wouldn’t make it, Terrified he would fall and drag us down with him, His only goal, his life-consuming goal, To put bread on our table, a roof over our head. With no time for anyone’s secrets, With no time for anyone’s dreams, He quietly earned the words that made me weep, The words that were carved, the following year, On his tombstone: HE TOOK CARE OF HIS FAMILY.”
― Judith Viorst, Nearing Ninety: And Other Comedies of Late Life

“Chega um tempo em que não nos é permitido não saber.”
― Judith Viorst, Perdas Necessárias

“...we should never grow so old, or change so much, that we cannot find room in our hearts for the wisdom of children's books.”
― Judith Viorst, What the Dormouse Said: Lessons for Grown-ups from Children's Books

“Mas reconhecer tudo isso e ainda assim encontrar a liberdade, fazer as escolhas, saber o que é e o que pode vir a ser, isso é o adulto responsável. Curvando-se à necessidade, deve escolher. Es- sa liberdade de escolha é a carga e a dádiva que todos recebem ao deixar a infância, a carga e a dádiva que todos levam quando atin- gem o fim da infância.”
― Judith Viorst, Perdas Necessárias

“In fact, I would like to propose that central to understanding our lives is understanding how we deal with loss. I would like to propose in this book that the people we are and the lives that we lead are determined, for better and worse, by our loss experiences.”
― Judith Viorst, Necessary Losses: The Loves, Illusions, Dependencies, and Impossible Expectations That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Grow

“It is true love because when he is late for dinner and I know he must be either having an affair or lying dead in the middle of the street, I always hope he’s dead.”
― Judith Viorst