Jeanne Marie Laskas Quotes

“Dreams are matters of the heart, things that pull you along as if they have hooked you someplace deep inside.”

— Jeanne Marie Laskas

“You can make your life so much larger simply be acknowledging everyone else's.”

— Jeanne Marie Laskas

“Chaos, I think, is youth. Youth at any age. Because as long as you have chaos, you are free of responsibility. When you are in chaos, when you don't know what's going on, when you're an ignorant dreamer ... when you're floating through space like that, you aren't supposed to get anything right, you aren't supposed to make sense, you're supposed to be ... amused,,,and aware. It can't go on. Not unless you choose that life. A life of never settling down, never making a claim on who you are, who you love ... Once you make those claims you become accountable. You have to get to work ... Dreams end. That's one thing I'm discovering.”

— Jeanne Marie Laskas

“Lately, in this city I love, this neighborhood I love, all I seem to notice are the intrusions. Hot Air. Reeking garbage. Lunatic neighbors ... I am inventing filters. Air filters. Stinking garbage filters. Lunatic-neighbor filters ... Sometimes I imagine plugging a big air conditioner to the front of my head so I can block the rest of the world out. That's not right.”

— Jeanne Marie Laskas

“If I'm going to be working out here in a place that at least feels like the middle of nowhere, I'm going to need access to the outside world. It's important to have access. Solitude is one thing, but you could turn into the Unabomber if you don't have some connection to people.”

— Jeanne Marie Laskas

“Now, brooder is an interesting word. People who worry a lot in silence are known as brooders. But then again so is a hen sitting on her eggs. The more I get to know chickens, the more I realize half our language comes from chickens. Well, not half. But an awful lot considering this isn't Latin or anything. Cooped up. Egghead. Hatch a plan. Henpecked. Pecker. Cock. Chickenshit. Chicken-scratch. A lot of chicken words are meant to deliver attitude, which isn't surprising to me now that I have chickens. Chickens aren't background animals like fish or sheep or horses. Chickens are in-your-face animals. Chickens if you have them, come to bracket your days. The rooster hollers all morning, and then in the evening the hens have left you their mysterious gift of eggs.
Silkies are said to be excellent brooders, to have a tendency toward "broodiness." This, too, is usually meant as a compliment.”

— Jeanne Marie Laskas

“The neighbor's flock has taken advantage of the chaos, and I think that's pretty smart.”

— Jeanne Marie Laskas

I do think there's a mind-set-no matter how much we may want to deny it in this country-about the perception of blackness. And sometimes it's a subconscious mind-set. Where anything associated with blackness has a negative connotation. This mind-set has a very fundamental assumption. A false assumption that black people cannot be intelligent. I

— Jeanne Marie Laskas

Just because politicians, scientists, and business execs are raging about it, and newspaper headlines are screaming it, doesn't mean the message sticks-or that people care. It takes more than that to change a culture. In

— Jeanne Marie Laskas

“Brooding is more something I do when I'm working. I know so much more about sitting around worrying about a work project than I do about worrying about kids. This could just be a fact of life for older moms. We've worked and worked and worked and if we are lucky enough to finally have a child or two, we find ourselves suddenly catapulted into a most alien kind of chaos.
Work is so much easier. Anyone will tell you that. To have a desk, where you have everything all lined up, and a schedule you more or less get to agree to. Work. I am a worker. This is so funny because I never really think of my work as work. I certainly never though of myself as having a career. Writing, work, this is just who I am. I am a person who sits at a desk and makes phone calls and taps at a computer keyboard and sips coffee and calls her mom at five. That I am anything better or smaller than that has come as sudden news to me.
Brand new.
News.”

— Jeanne Marie Laskas

“I was suppose to write a book about being a mom, to organize my thoughts into chapters and figure out a structure to hang them on, to make a lasting point, but somehow I decided to go ahead and become a mother instead.”

— Jeanne Marie Laskas

“Isolation is aloneness that feels forced upon you, like a punishment. Solitude is aloneness you choose and embrace. I think great things can come out of solitude, out of going to a place where all is quiet except the beating of your heart.”

— Jeanne Marie Laskas

“Why do we think the people on stage are the only ones having fun?”

— Jeanne Marie Laskas

“All peace-loving women shut up when they sense they have stepped onto Guy Turf. Guy Turf is a murky realm of ego and pride and chivalry and testosterone and heroism.”

— Jeanne Marie Laskas

“It's much better to be apart and wish you were together than to be together and wish you were apart.”

— Jeanne Marie Laskas

“Forgiveness is the path to healing.”

— Jeanne Marie Laskas

“You plant a garden one flower at a time ... You write a book one word at a time, clean a closet one shelf at a time, run a marathon one step at a time. If you feel defeated by some large task, get your spade and dig the first hole.”

— Jeanne Marie Laskas

“Maybe the biggest problem with loneliness is that we walk around thinking we're the only ones suffering from it.”

— Jeanne Marie Laskas

“This is one of the take-home messages for me: we just walk around with this narrative in America that everybody wants to be rich and famous. That that's why people do what they do. And you know, all through these pages you learn over and over again no, actually not even NFL cheerleaders are doing it for fame and fortune. There's another motivation going on that is so pure and human. That to me was an eye-opener in a really wonderful way.”

— Jeanne Marie Laskas

“I wanted to go to a place where I could think, really sink into my own imagination, or ride it, or drift along it, as in a balloon. The kind of place that probably all writers crave. The kind of place where the outside world is still and quiet and you get a chance to listen, to peer, to go inward”

— Jeanne Marie Laskas

“But the writing life, it turned out, was difficult. It wasn't like you could sit down and flip a switch and crank on the ventilation system. Sometimes it didn't work, and sometimes you couldn't even find the switch.”

— Jeanne Marie Laskas

I think the call of the inward life starts here. Solitude helps you differentiate, define the borders of the self. Solitude helps you figure our where everybody else stops and you begins.

— Jeanne Marie Laskas