Joyce Maynard

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

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

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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 is not the task of a reader to please her subjects.

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 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.

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.

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.

I continued to protect him with my silence.

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

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

You write about what you know, and you write about what you want to know.

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

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?