Have I Told You This Already?: Stories I Don't Want to Forget to Remember - the New York Times bestseller from the Gilmore Girls star

by Lauren Graham

say Phoebe Bridgers when I really mean to say Phoebe Waller-Bridge,

It had never occurred to me that there was a category of rich people who were so rich that they didn’t care if they looked rich, which to me defeated the purpose of being rich, but what did I know.

These two sightings taught me that famous people are always much tinier and even more depressingly beautiful in person,

In other words, so panicked was I to be considered a shoplifter that my solution was to shoplift.

It’s strange to have feelings for an institution, especially one that can’t possibly have feelings for me.

As a younger person, I don’t remember having feelings for a new building going up, but as a less young person, it affects me now when one is destroyed or deserted. Even if it’s a place I took for granted:

I feel like I’ve spent so much of my time as a grown-up figuring out who and what my daily people and places are: these little connections become routine, reliable, until the day when one of them moves locations or a business closes entirely, and your routine has to change. The shift is small and yet a shock to the system, a momentary inconvenience but also a reminder that impermanence looms, and nothing—and no one—lives forever.

and I always tell her you can study science or blueberry waffles as far as I’m concerned; the most important thing is to be a good and kind person. I don’t think we remind the children of that enough, and I worry about them all thinking more about their accomplishments or that they need to start companies they sell to Mark Cuban on Shark Tank by the time they’re 12 years old rather than having a simple, happy life full of friends and books and staring at the sky for no reason.

It’s very useful to always have a friend who is much older and one who is much younger. The older friend will remind you what there is to look forward to and the younger friend will keep you telling your stories over again so you’ll remember not to forget them. An older friend will tell you you have plenty of time yet, and a younger friend will make you forget time altogether because when you’re with them you’ll feel, even for a moment, that you’re the exact same age.

In the U.S., the last shot of the day is called the martini, left over from when everyone drank like Don Draper.

None of them had seen anything I’d been in, but when someone told them I was an actress they proceeded to call me “Hollywood” for the rest of the trip, and frankly, I sort of loved it.

do every job as if you’re being well paid.

a post-Christmas feeling when something you’ve spent so much time looking forward to has happily exceeded expectations but has sadly come to an end.

I auditioned for one of his earliest movies, While You Were Sleeping. I didn’t get the part—some girl named Sandra Bullock did.

Love that film!

(Let’s not overthink sentences like these, I’m not going to—I owed this book to my publisher two months ago.)

But on that day, without a care, there in the square with my hair in the air (March 1st the book was due, and we are well into April),

Incidentally, everything I’ve read about aging, whether fiction or nonfiction, has been written by a woman.

Suddenly, the world and my impulse buying all made sense, and I jumped ahead in time to the cozy marmalade lifestyle I’d soon be living.

I subscribe to Master Class, where I have taken classes in mastering the art of French cooking, tortilla making, floral arrangements, hostage negotiation, and how to be Christina Aguilera. When does the mastery end? How many things do I need to be good at to feel good about myself?

When life gives you lemons, you can make lemonade, but you don’t have to.

You can ignore Internet traps like boiling and peeling and soaking and Wordle.

Understandably, a being with this much excitement about the world could not be bothered to do something as mundane as urinate.

She had a laugh like champagne spilling out of the bottle.

NEW YORK IS a person.

I know the prettiest streets in New York, and this avenue was far from any of them. It’s so ugly over here, I thought to myself. And suddenly, I felt embarrassed, ashamed to have such a negative thought about a city that has given me so much.

but I loved doing things I seldom saw other kids doing.

walking across the city out of frustration when things weren’t going my way, walking across the city for inspiration just like I was doing today.

New York leaves it up to you.

I asked and New York answered. What are the odds?