Ayelet Waldman Quotes

I still have to work on my weight and some of my other demons.

I was so determined not to pass on to my children what I perceived to be the faults of my upbringing.

Weight is just not a hot button. In fact, during my life, it probably should have been on my radar screen a bit more. I look back at work photos and am shocked. Was I eating the people I was interviewing?! Good Lord, I was big.

My mother, she's like, She can work on herself.

My instincts tell me that you will spiral into a very unhealthy place if you start pondering about how other people think about you and, quite frankly, I don't want to go there.

We should try to understand our innermost needs. We shouldn't use irony to reduce their power.

But I think that your entire life is a process of sorting out some of those early messages that you got.

I'm so blessed to have such enlightened parents. It must have been very hard to watch their able-bodied son lock himself up in his old room for most of his 20s.

I've always been the porky boy in my head.

There has to be a balance between power and vulnerability. That's something I feel I have in my own life, something I struggle with and - on a good day - like about myself.

I used to have a real problem with self-pity. Every time the devil would throw a pity party, I would attend.

By the age of 18, I was very fat. My dad would say there's a Spall fat gene. But I was fat because I ate loads. I used to go and buy six or seven chocolate bars and eat my way through them.

I have obsessed about my weight in some sort of way all my life. I used to write in my journal what I weighed every day.

Eating disorders, body dysmorphia and a general dissatisfaction with one's life and body seems to ail too many young people.

Motherhood has brought me many joys and insights, but the new perspective it granted me on the role I had inadvertently played in young women's lives for the 2 decades I spent in the modeling industry was downright sobering.

When you take the time to understand why your parents did the things they did, you stand a good chance of learning more about your own behavior.

My older kids are fantastic people. It can't be the result of my influence on them.

If small things have the power to disturb you, then who you think you are is exactly that: small.

Growing up, my mom was very strict about how I dressed and how I behaved, and I said to myself that I wasn't going to be like that. But now I know I'm going to be exactly like my mom. I'm going to be worse!

I was fat, and that was awful because when you're young and sensitive, you think the world is over because you're fat.

I have never been jealous. Not even when my dad finished fifth grade a year before I did.

I spent an awful lot of my life underestimating myself and, as a result, not exceeding my own expectations.

I think happiness comes from self-acceptance. We all try different things, and we find some comfortable sense of who we are. We look at our parents and learn and grow and move on. We change.

The biggest lesson I've learned from my children is to look in the mirror at myself, not at them. I've realized that everything I've done has had an impact on them. We have to understand that they are like little paparazzi. They take our picture when we don't want them to and then they show it to us in their behavior.

If a small thing has the power to make you angry, does that not indicate something about your size?