My mother had no idea that her daughter would turn out to be a writer, but she would not let me go through a day of my childhood without music.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of music in the author's childhood and its influence on her journey as a writer.
In this quote, Virginia Euwer Wolff reflects on the unanticipated impact that her mother had on her creative development. While her mother may not have envisioned her daughter becoming a writer, she recognized the essential role that music played in fostering a rich and inspiring environment during her formative years. This illustrates how seemingly small influences can shape a person's future in profound ways.
In practice
This quote can be used during a speech about the role of family in shaping career paths.
As authors evolve and try to trace the precedents that have shaped their work, it sometimes becomes a matter of identifying the shadowy figure in the back row of the mental photograph, or of grabbing at the tail of a memory that's just slipping out the window into thin air.
I've had three of my own children and spent my professional life thinking about children. And yet I still find my relation to my children deeply puzzling.
I had to make a major decision with myself because I just don't think you can do both: try to have a baby career and raise it and have a baby baby and raise it. And to try to do justice to either one. It was a very conscious decision on my part not to have children - which I have never regretted.
There is no greater warrior than a mother protecting her child.
I was ravenous for my child and took to gorging myself in the boneyard, hoping that she might possibly meet me halfway, or just beyond, one night, if only for an instant—step back into her own bare feet, onto the wet grass or fallen leaves or snowy ground of the living Enon, so that we could share just one last human word.
I think birth and motherhood are not things that you're trained to do. You might have a good example in your own mum, but nobody teaches you how to be a really great mum.
If I do my job well, then God will smile on my offspring and on their offspring. I'm sure my father is seeing a blessing in me.
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