Jenny Mollen Quotes

Sometimes my mother had difficulty communicating with me about certain topics.

Every year I tell myself that I'm not going to read any reviews and then I do. We're all human and when I read something negative it hurts. I think when you write it's part of the game, you're going to get some good reviews and some bad reviews and that's how it goes. I don't write for the reviews.

I had long been resistant to doing a documentary about my mother for personal reasons. And I thought there was no way she'd want to, but then I asked her and she said 'yes.'

A lot of teenagers have parents that are maybe a little too real with them.

Your family is unavoidable. You cannot escape them or trade them in for another family. You also can't change them... but you can change your response to them.

Scrawling 'I'm gay' in lipstick on your parents' bedroom mirror may demonstrate a personal signature of the highest style, but is not particularly sensitive to their feelings. Upon hearing me utter those words almost twenty years ago, my own mother did what and self-respecting middle-class mom would do: went directly into a seizure.

Maybe if I ever come to write about my teens and adulthood - and I can't imagine I will - but if I do, then maybe I will want to say a bit more about the ways in which my parents' relationship with one another impacted on me in later years.

I've always been very private, maybe because I discovered my mother, who is a wonderful lady, is very emotional.

I grew up in a family where you were allowed to say anything; you were allowed to show weakness... I have no problems talking about anything, basically. But at the same time, I know I'm different than a woman.

When I finally began to publish, my father never read my work. He'd say, 'Oh, that's your mother's sort of thing.' But my mother found the books rather upsetting. I figure she read just enough to know that she didn't want to go there.

It gets to you as a father when your kids don't react to you in the way you imagine.

My dad was fine, but I have to say my mum was upset when I said I was leaving home.

I'm always sad when Dad doesn't like my columns. He waits for them every week and usually likes them, in which case he doesn't say a word - it's only if he's critical that he bothers to call.

I think it was like, 'I don't look like you, Mom. I don't look like you, Dad. Like, what's going on here?' They just kind of told me I was adopted. I was like, 'OK, that's fine with me.'

As irony would have it, the very person who inspired me to write a memoir... was the only person to be ejected from it. My brother didn't appear in 'Out of Egypt.'

Kids never get pissed at their parents. Unheard of.

A writer is rarely so well inspired as when he talks about himself.

[On writing her first poem at age eight:] An ode to my dead mother and father, who were both alive and pretty pissed off.

Lacey shrugged bashfully. “Do you think I’m superficial?” “Well, yeah.” I thought of myself standing outside Becca’s bedroom, hoping she’d take her shirt off. “But so am I,” I added. “So is everyone.

I'm writing a memoir. I'm four pages in. I start with my first memory, which is kicking my uncle in the balls. I was four.

Feelings are never stupid, they just make us feel stupid sometimes.

It's rare in movies or even in life where somebody owns up to their needs. I guess in a relationship it's the only way it has a chance to survive it.

I always remind my kids, "I'm your parent, but I'm a human being, too, so I may not be perfect."

[On being lesbian:] One pointer: don't come out to your dad in a moving vehicle.