Jodi Picoult Quotes

They very seldom let me lose my cool. They made me like I was Polly Perfect, which was ridiculous so that when I bump into kids on the street they'd say 'I wish my Mom were like you.'

As a mother, the one thing that always goes through your head is, You're never enough. You never can be enough - or do enough - for your kids. It's a never-ending issue for me. I had to learn: Don't beat yourself up so much.... You have to take it one day at a time, do the best that you can and enjoy yourself. I notice that if there are some times I've been stressed, because I'm human and stress about things, that affects your kids. So you have to make sure you're a happy mom so they can be happy.

Dads - and people in general - should keep in mind that we as mothers put enough pressure on ourselves. We don't need outside pressure put on us.

Nobody cares that you're smart and nobody cares that your kids don't have bruises.

This weird pressure that mothers are put under, like this idea that if you can't breastfeed, you're not doing something properly, or if you choose not to.

A lot of women feel like they should be enjoying motherhood, they should be fulfilled and shouldn't be thinking, 'I wish I didn't have to do this.'

I used to go to my kids' soccer games and I was the only parent who wasn't screaming, because I'd have to do a show that night. It was hard. Moms and dads get more emotional at those soccer and Little League games than at a professional game.

With social media, people share mostly their best moments. Don't feel like you're not doing enough when you see a mom posting about making applesauce after you bought it. Ha ha! It's fine! Just for raising a little human being, you should be commended.

It strikes me as gruesome and comical that in our culture we have an expectation that man can always solve his problems. This is so untrue that it makes me want to cry — or laugh.

I didn't realise how hard it was to be a mom and keep it all together.

As women we try so hard to be perfect at everything, all the time. It's impossible.

When I had my first child, I was too embarrassed to tell a single soul that I wasn't the over-the-moon, picture-perfect new mother I was supposed to be.

As a single parent, it can really be tough if the father's not in the picture much. Physically, emotionally and financially, you are trying to be there for your child and it can really get on top of you.

Kids, she says. When they’re little, they believe everything you tell them about the world. As a mother, you’re the world almanac and the encyclopedia and the dictionary and the Bible, all rolled up together. But after they hit some magic age, it’s just the opposite. After that, you’re either a liar or a fool or a villain.

A moral society will not set standards for becoming a parent, but it will establish irreducible minimums for maintaining that sacred status.

At a certain point the family moved to Jaipur, where no woman could avoid the doli or purdah. They kept her in the house from morning to night, either cooking or doing nothing. [My mother] hated doing nothing, she hated to cook. So she became pale and ill, and far from being concerned about her health, my grandfather said, 'Who's going to marry her now?' So my grandmother waited for my grandfather to go out, and then she dressed my mother as a man and let her go out riding with her brothers.

Our society nurtures the illusion that all the rewards go to the people who are perfect. But many of us are finding out that trying to be perfect is costly.

Andrew said you were the best person he ever knew." "He reached that conclusion before he saw me raise three barbarian children to adulthood. I understand your mother has six." "Right." "And you're the oldest." "Yes." "That's too bad. Parents always make their worst mistakes with the oldest children. That's when parents know the least and care the most, so they're more likely to be wrong and also more likely to insist that they're right.

I think it's important for those of us in a position of responsibility to be firm in sharing our experiences, to understand that the babies out of wedlock is a very difficult chore for mom and baby alike... I believe we ought to say there is a different alternative than the culture that is proposed by people like Miss Wolf in society... And, you know, hopefully, condoms will work, but it hasn't worked.

The art of never making a mistake is crucial to motherhood. To be effective and to gain the respect she needs to function, a mother must have her children believe she has never engaged in sex, never made a bad decision, never caused her own mother a moment's anxiety, and was never a child.

I think a lot of people, but particularly a lot of women, get to this stage when I'd say they're over 50. We face a lot of hard judgment from the world, we women. If you're a full-time mother, you should be out working. If you're out working, your kids must be being overlooked.

I was able to draw a lot from my own childhood, my friends' childhoods as well and my daughters' friends who are like my children as well. They multiply all the time. So you can have everything and say I can get all this done and then late at night one of your kids have a freak out about school or an assignment you end up staying up til 3 in morning helping them through it. Or somebody gets sick or has a crisis.

Some mothers in today's world feel "cumbered" by home duties and are thus attracted by other more "romantic" challenges. Such women could make the same error of perspective that Martha made. The woman, for instance, who deserts the cradle in order to help defend civilization against the barbarians may well later meet, among the barbarians, her own neglected child.

On one thing professionals and amateurs agree: mothers can't win.

We don't really live in a culture that loves boys or loves children, and we don't encourage boys to be whole.