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"It is not the task of a reader to please her subjects."
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"There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it."

"She'd obviously read the book many times before, and so she read flawlessly and confidently, and I could hear her smile in the reading of it, and the sound of that smile made me think that maybe I would like novels better if Alaska Young read them to me."

"If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all."

"Sometimes it is the reader that sucks, not the book."

"If someone wrote it and it had a peculiar twist, I've read it."

"The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story."

"I enjoy books as misers enjoy treasures, because I know I can enjoy them whenever I please."
Explore more quotes by Joyce Maynard

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

"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?"

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"I wonder what it is that the people who criticize me for telling this story truly object to: is it that I have dared to tell the story? Or that the story turns out not to be the one they wanted to hear?"
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