“I am not a perfect friend, and it is impossible not to rebuff or be rebuffed if you move about the world.” IfsWorldMovingPerfectImpossibleRebuff Author:Anne Roiphe
“Is it possible that my sons-in-law will do toilets? If we raise boys to know that diapers need to be changed and refrigerators need to be cleaned, there's hope for the next generation.” IfsKnowsNeedsLawNextBoysGenerationsChangedSonRaisesMy SonToiletsNext GenerationIn-lawsHouseworkRefrigeratorsDiapers Author:Anne Roiphe
“I don't really think it comes as a shock to every writer if somebody in their family is mad at them. Yes, it's very upsetting. But it's inherent in the process of trying to make sense of one's life, which is what I think is perhaps at the bottom of writing at all.” IfsThinkingWritingTryingProcessMadBottomMake SenseUpsetShockInherent Author:Anne Roiphe
“My mother had died when I wrote my first book. I was twenty-seven, so it was right at the beginning of my writing life. I don't know if she had lived, if I would have done it, certainly not quite like I did. But, you can't rethink it. You wrote what you wrote, it meant something to other people, and that's your good.” PeopleIfsKnowsWritingFirstsBookDoneMotherDiedTwentiesSevenWriting Life Author:Anne Roiphe
“People always think their world is coming to an end if they're exposed, and of course it isn't coming to an end; it goes right on exactly the way it always was.” PeopleIfsThinkingWorldWayEndsCoursesExposedComing To An End Author:Anne Roiphe
“It's true, we tend to write about the same thing over and over again because this is our trauma. If I had been in World War II, I might have been writing about D-Day over and over again.” IfsWorldWritingHas BeensWarMightTraumaWar Of The WorldsWorld War IiWorld War IMight Have BeenD Day Author:Anne Roiphe
“I have two writer daughters, and a psychoanalyst daughter, and a lawyer daughter, and they wish we didn't write, I'm sure, but we write. If we were a painting family, we would paint.” IfsWritingTwoWishPaintingDaughterPaintLawyer Author:Anne Roiphe
“You have to have a certain kind of thickening of the hide. I mean, I'm not particularly worried about what other people think. If other people think that I was not the world's most perfect mother, they are completely right.” PeopleIfsThinkingWorldKindMeanMotherCertainPerfectWorried Author:Anne Roiphe
“If I were planning to be stranded on a desert island, I wouldn't take Freud's books with me, because I've already read them all.” IfsBookPlanningDesertIslandsStranded Author:Anne Roiphe
“Romanticizing the act of writing or any other art is not very helpful to the artist or the art. It's much better if one simply does.” IfsWritingDoeArtArtistArt IsHelpful Author:Anne Roiphe
“We were not always 70, or rather our 70 is an accumulation of all the other ways we were. Our 5-year-old selves became our 10-year-old selves, and so on and on; and if we unpack our selves, the full album appears. Every moment is a part of the following moment, and we are all a continuum.” IfsWayYearsSelfMomentsAgeYouthAlbumsFollowingAccumulationContinuumOld Self Author:Anne Roiphe
