Elly > Elly's Quotes

“Perhaps, in the extravagance of youth, we give away our devotions easily and all but arbitrarily, on the mistaken assumption that we’ll always have more to give.”
― Michael Cunningham, A Home at the End of the World

“If I looked in the mirror someday and saw no dark circles under my eyes, I would probably look better. I just wouldn't look like me. ”
― Sarah Vowell, Take the Cannoli

“I, myself, am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.”
― Augusten Burroughs

“I am prone to envy. It is one of my three default emotions, the others being greed and rage. I have also experienced compassion and generosity, but only fleetingly and usually while drunk, so I have little memory.”
― Augusten Burroughs

“But truth be told, I'm not as dour-looking as I would like. I'm stuck with this round, sweetie-pie face, tiny heart-shaped lips, the daintiest dimples, and apple cheeks so rosy I appear in a perpetual blush. At five foot four, I barely squeak by average height. And then there's my voice: straight out of second grade. I come across so young and innocent and harmless that I have been carded for buying maple syrup. Tourists feel more safe approaching me for directions, telemarketers always ask if my mother is home, and waitresses always, always call me 'Hon.”
― Sarah Vowell, Take the Cannoli

“Why do we pursue information that we know will never leave our heads?”
― Dave Eggers

“I believe the sin of covetise is that pang of resentment you may feel when even the people you love best have what you want and don't have.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“It is possible to imagine a person so entirely that the image resists attempts to dislodge it.”
― Amy Hempel, The Collected Stories

“I suppose there are people who can pass up free guacamole, but they're either allergic to avocado or too joyless to live.”
― Frank Bruni, Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater

“Time is the school in which we learn”
― Joan Didion

“By the way, when Oprah Winfrey is suggesting you may have overextended yourself, you need to examine your fucking life.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“With a secret like that, at some point the secret itself becomes irrelevant. The fact that you kept it does not.”
― Sara Gruen, Water for Elephants

“At some point, the family you create is more important than the one you were born into.”
― Shilpi Somaya Gowda, Secret Daughter

“I am a slow reader, and fast eater; I wish it were the other way around.”
― Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life

“My mother had more than once remarked that my father was one of the war's casualties, that the Sam Hall who came back wasn't the one who left, the one she'd fallen in love with. I didn't doubt that she believed this certain truth, or even that it was true, after a fashion. But it was a nice way of ignoring another simple truth--that people changed, with or without wars, and that we sometimes don't know people as well as we think we do, that the worst errors in judgment often result from imagining we understand what has escaped us entirely.”
― Richard Russo, The Risk Pool

“A remarkable thing about me is that the time that elapses between a sad thought and a flood of tears is three or four seconds.”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“He couldn't even tell whether he was angry or contrite, whether it was forgiveness he wanted or the power to forgive.”
― Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road

“My heart started racing, not the bad kind of heart racing, like I'm going to die. But the good kind of heart racing, like, Hello, can I help you with something? If not, please step aside because I'm about to kick the shit out of life.”
― Maria Semple, Where'd You Go, Bernadette

“It doesn't seem like I should have been able to get to this life from my old one, like there aren't even roads between those two places.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Attachments

“Relax” is a real tough one for me. Another tough one is “smile.” “Smile” doesn’t really work either. Telling me to relax or smile when I’m angry is like bringing a birthday cake into an ape sanctuary. You’re just asking to get your nose and genitals bitten off.”
― Amy Poehler, Yes Please

“I love my boys so much I fear my heart will explode. I wonder if this love will crack open my chest and split me in half. It is scary, this love.”
― Amy Poehler

“Everything falls into the hands of music eventually. The only thing that ever rescued me was listening to a big voice. There are years accumulated in a sound.”
― Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin

“That’s why all those records from high school sound so good. It’s not that the songs were better—it’s that we were listening to them with our friends, drunk for the first time on liqueurs, touching sweaty palms, staring for hours at a poster on the wall, not grossed out by carpet or dirt or crumpled, oily bedsheets. These songs and albums were the best ones because of how huge adolescence felt then, and how nostalgia recasts it now.”
― Carrie Brownstein, Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl: A Memoir

“There is something freeing in seeing yourself in a new context. People have no preconceived notion of who you are, and there is relief in knowing that you can re-create yourself.”
― Carrie Brownstein, Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl

“So I won’t trap myself into quantifying which matters more, race, or gender, or class. Race, gender, and class are basic elements of one’s living. Basic as utensils and clothing; always in use; always needing repairs and updates. Basic as body and breath, justice and reason, passion and imagination. So the question isn’t “Which matters most?,” it’s “How does each matter?” Gender, race, class; class, race, gender—your three in one and one in three.”
― Margo Jefferson, Negroland: A Memoir

“I am not easy to love but I am well loved. I try to love well in return.”
― Roxane Gay, An Untamed State

“I'm naive enough to think that love is always good, no matter how long ago, no matter the circumstances. I'm not old enough yet to imagine the instances where this isn't true and where regret outweighs everything.”
― Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces

“But simply punishing the broken--walking away from them or hiding them from sight--only ensures that they remain broken and we do, too. There is no wholeness outside of our reciprocal humanity.”
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy

“I know now that what is tragic isn’t the moment. It is the memory.”
― Jacqueline Woodson, Another Brooklyn

“You can have compassion without forgiving. There are many ways to move on, and pretending to feel a certain way isn’t one of them.”
― Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed