A Quote by Mary Gordon

I would trade any writerly success if it would mean my children would be happy. — © Mary Gordon
I would trade any writerly success if it would mean my children would be happy.
You would think, wouldn’t you, that if you were the child of a happy marriage, then you ought to have a better than average marriage yourself – either through some genetic inheritance or because you’d learnt from example? But it doesn’t seem to work like that. So perhaps you need the opposite example – to see mistakes in order not to make them yourself. Except this would mean that the best way for parents to ensure their children have happy marriages would be to have unhappy ones themselves. So what’s the answer?
Eternity would mean nothing without you. For no power on this earth would I trade my Elena.
I would rediscover the secret of great communications and great combustions. I would say storm. I would say river. I would say tornado. I would say leaf. I would say tree. I would be drenched by all rains, moistened by all dews. I would roll like frenetic blood on the slow current of the eye of words turned into mad horses into fresh children into clots into curfew into vestiges of temples into precious stones remote enough to discourage miners. Whoever would not understand me would not understand any better the roaring of a tiger.
If you can create a reality that is entirely fictitious, it doesn't owe anything to this stuff out here, but you interact with it on your own terms. I mean, if you took it to the point where finally you get, say, tactile feedback, so you were wired in in terms of the whole nervous system. The sensorium. You would have the ultimate art form. I mean, any painter would want it, any filmmaker would want access to it you know, any musician would want access to it. It would eliminate the need for the divisions between what we describe as the arts, converting the whole thing to experience.
So," she went on, "it got me thinking about what cost beauty. Or for that matter, what cost anything? Would you trade love for beauty? Or happiness for beauty? Could a gorgeous person with a mean streak be a worthy trade? And if you did make the trade, decide you'd take that beautiful swan and hope it wouldn't turn on you, what would you do if it did?
I would feel like my life was a success if my children grow into well-adjusted, happy, functioning members of society. Capable and happy and normal.
Ray would be in trouble, he would get drunk, he would try and kill J.R on three different occasions, he would make mistakes with financial affairs, and have various human problems, but he didn't have any mean bones in his body! That was a little bit of what the show was about.
Not everybody loves their children. If that was a fact, all the children would be happy and they would make happy adults. Instead, we have lots of miserable children that later became miserable adults. This is a fact. We cannot change that.
I would love to share the screen with Meryl Streep, wouldn't we all? I would love to work with Spielberg and Scorsese; that would be lovely. I'm also a huge fan of Johnny Depp and the way he creates his characters, so that would be fun. I mean, any of the greats, really.
When I was younger I thought that if you were famous and successful, it would mean that you just felt happy all the time. That you would become, like, this mystical creature that people just adored. And so you would adore yourself.
I had to think long and hard about what it would imply, what it would mean. Would it mean any alterations of one's lifestyle? Or, more than that, the way that people regarded you? The way they reacted to you if you had a Sir in front of your name?
I would encourage my children to protect themselves if there's any sort of physical abuse against them. I would definitely go speak to the perpetrator, and if the perpetrator was a child, I'd speak to their parents. But I ... Oh my God, I don't know what I'd do if I was privy to watching my kids being bullied! I would do what any parent would, I'd be like a grizzly bear protecting his cubs.
We do not realise that we are children of eternity. If we did, then success would be no success, and failure would be no failure to us.
"In all this world there is nothing so beautiful as a happy child," says good old Santa Claus; and if he had his way the children would all be beautiful, for all would be happy.
That's one of the unintended consequences of the women's liberation movement - that, in fact, the women that would lead this country would be feminine, they would be pro-family, they would have husbands, they would love their children.
I would never teach a child of mine to be kind to a cop who would shoot you in the back of the head. I would never have that conversation because children don't hear what you mean, they hear what you say.
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