Maureen > Maureen's Quotes

“Forgive me, Dellarobia. It’s a selfish habit. I never learn anything from listening to myself.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior

“Never explain, never retract, never apologize. Just get the thing done and let them howl.”
― Miriam Toews, All My Puny Sorrows

“But what is the bedrock of civilized society? Libraries, said Elf.”
― Miriam Toews, All My Puny Sorrows

“Can’t you just be like the rest of us, normal and sad and fucked up and alive and remorseful?”
― Miriam Toews, All My Puny Sorrows

“I’ve never travelled,” I told her. “Oh, you absolutely should,” she insisted, “if only so that you can come home and really see it for what it is. That’s my favourite part.”
― Paula McLain, Circling the Sun

“Anxiety is what kept us alive, back in the day. It helps us know when things are wrong, when situations are dangerous or people mean us harm. It's just sometimes it gets ahead of itself, right?”
― Abbi Waxman, The Bookish Life of Nina Hill

“A broken family is a family in which any member must break herself into pieces to fit in. A whole family is one in which each member can bring her full self to the table knowing that she will always be both held and free.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed

“A mother’s heart breaks a million ways in her lifetime.”
― Ashley Audrain, The Push

“Marriages can float apart. Sometimes we don’t notice how far we’ve gone until all of a sudden, the water meets the horizon and it feels like we’ll never make it back.”
― Ashley Audrain, The Push

“as the Links, the Knickerbocker, and the New York Athletic Club continued to exclude Jews from membership.”
― Joshua M. Greene, Unstoppable: Siggi B. Wilzig's Astonishing Journey from Auschwitz Survivor and Penniless Immigrant to Wall Street Legend

“Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.”
― William Martin, The Parent's Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for Modern Parents

“only time could be seen whole, then you could see the past remaining intact, instead of vanishing in the rearview mirror.”
― Dani Shapiro, Signal Fires

“Bromley Mountain. It was close to”
― John Irving, The Last Chairlift

“A son in the Pabst Brewing Company family had opened the ski area in 1938. When my mom”
― John Irving, The Last Chairlift

“even though a candle is not very bright, it is better to light one than if you do not light any candle at all, and then you are complaining because it is too dark.”
― Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

“can’t share our real feelings, we might as well be men,” she joked one”
― Joan Anderson, A Year by the Sea: Thoughts of an Unfinished Woman