Most of us don't have mothers who blazed a trail for us--at least, not all the way. Coming of age before or during the inception of the women's movement, whether as working parents or homemakers, whether married or divorced, our mothers faced conundrums--what should they be? how should they act?--that became our uncertainties.

Anne Roiphe

Categorized in : Mother Women Working Parents

We also have to make sure our children know the history of women. Tell them the rotten truth: It wasn't always possible for women to become doctors or managers or insurance people. Let them be armed with a true picture of the way we want it to be.

Anne Roiphe

doctors children people

A woman whose smile is open and whose expression is glad has a kind of beauty no matter what she wears.

Anne Roiphe

smile beauty love

I think it is a good thing to have woman friends at every stage of life. We confide in each other, we support each other, we understand each other most of the time. Of course, sometimes we are competitive or angry or distant, too. But I do think it is important not to let the main friendships slip away in the sweep of the days.

Anne Roiphe

support important thinking

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.

Anne Roiphe

people world thinking

Grief is in two parts. The first is loss. The second is the remaking of life.

Anne Roiphe

grief life moving

People always tell me either A. you love him. B. you hate him. My usual answer? C. All of the above.

Anne Roiphe

confused hate people

Some people who think they are in unhappy marriages are just in unhappy bodies.

Anne Roiphe

unhappy people thinking

Many writers do write about their families and their immediate loved ones and love experiences, either as children or as adults. And very often people get offended by it.

Anne Roiphe

writing children people

A person who has no secrets is a liar. We always fold ourselves away from others just enough to preserve a secret or two, something that we cannot share without destroying our inner landscape.

Anne Roiphe

secret liars two

Decay is quiet but ghastly, explosion is dramatic and dreadful. There's not much to choose between the two of them in reality, and most of our lives have sufficient of both.

Anne Roiphe

decay two reality

I have always been fascinated by the human mind, conscious and unconscious - that is what writing and reading is about, too. The why of your life and the why of your choices and the what has happened that you know and the what that you don't know is really riveting, and psychoanalysts share my wonder at how it all unfolds.

Anne Roiphe

choices reading writing

One of the things about parents and children is that there is no way that you go through this without there being mutual anger.

Anne Roiphe

parent children way

I really consider myself a writer, and a writer who is sometimes a social critic. I'm not an ideologue, I don't join a party. I follow along and take notes. Sometimes I throw in my two cents.

Anne Roiphe

party sometimes two

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.

Anne Roiphe

law boys son

I am not a perfect friend, and it is impossible not to rebuff or be rebuffed if you move about the world.

Anne Roiphe

perfect world moving

I would prefer you not to say, "That was the most terribly written piece I've ever read." That would hurt me. But you don't think I'm the best person in the world? Well, alright.

Anne Roiphe

pieces hurt thinking

I believe that it is our human right to be parents and women. And there's no contradiction between feminism, which means women should have all that they are entitled to, all that they can do, all the opportunities that they can take advantage of they should have.

Anne Roiphe

opportunity mean believe

Our mythology tells us so much about fathers and sons. ... What do we know about mothers and daughters? ... Our power is so oblique, so hidden, so ethereal a matter, that we rarely struggle with our daughters over actual kingdoms or corporate shares. On the other hand, our attractiveness dries as theirs blooms, our journey shortens just as theirs begins. We too must be afraid and awed and amazed that we cannot live forever and that our replacements are eager for their turn, indifferent to our wishes, ready to leave us behind.

Anne Roiphe

daughter mother father

There is cruelty in divorce. There is cruelty in forced or unfortunate marriage. We will continue to cry at weddings because we know how bittersweet, how fragile is the truth. We will always need legal divorce just as an emergency escape hatch is crucial in every submarine. No sense, however, in denying that after every divorce someone will be running like a cat, tin cans tied to its tail: spooked and slowed down.

Anne Roiphe

divorce cat running

What other people think of me is not really my major concern in life. What other people think of what I write is another matter.

Anne Roiphe

writing people thinking