Judith Viorst (born February 3, 1931) is an American author, newspaper journalist, and psychoanalysis researcher. She is perhaps best known for her children's literature, such as The Tenth Good Thing About Barney (about the death of a pet) and the Alexander series of short picture books.
Viorst is a 1952 graduate of the Newark College of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey. In 1968, Viorst signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War. In the latter part of the 1970s, after two decades of writing for children and adults, she turned to the study of Freudian psychology. In 1981, after six years of study at Washington Psychoanalytic Institute, she became a research graduate there.
Read more about Judith Viorst: Personal Life
Famous quotes by judith viorst:
“Friends broaden our horizons. They serve as new models with whom we can identify. They allow us to be ourselvesand accept us that way. They enhance our self-esteem because they think were okay, because we matter to them. And because they matter to usfor various reasons, at various levels of intensitythey enrich the quality of our emotional life.”
—Judith Viorst (20th century)
“Our mother gives us our earliest lessons in loveand its partner, hate. Our fatherour second otherMelaborates on them. Offering us an alternative to the mother-baby relationship . . . presenting a masculine model which can supplement and contrast with the feminine. And providing us with further and perhaps quite different meanings of lovable and loving and being loved.”
—Judith Viorst (20th century)
“Our ego ideal is precious to us because it repairs a loss of our earlier childhood, the loss of our image of self as perfect and whole, the loss of a major portion of our infantile, limitless, aint-I-wonderful narcissism which we had to give up in the face of compelling reality. Modified and reshaped into ethical goals and moral standards and a vision of what at our finest we might be, our dream of perfection lives onour lost narcissism lives onin our ego ideal.”
—Judith Viorst (20th century)
“My mom says Im her sugarplum.
My mom says Im her lamb.
My mom says Im completely perfect
Just the way I am.
My mom says Im a super-special wonderful terrific little guy.
My mom just had another baby.
Why?”
—Judith Viorst (20th century)