The Middle Place Quotes

“Appreciation is the purest,strongest form of love. It is the outward-bound kind of love that asks for nothing and gives everything.”
― Kelly Corrigan, The Middle Place

“Even when all the paperwork-a marriage license, a notarized deed, two birth certificates, and seven years of tax returns-clearly indicates you're an adult, but all the same, there you are, clutching the phone and thanking God that you're still somebody's daughter.”
― Kelly Corrigan, The Middle Place

“We'll bury our mothers and fathers - shuttling our children off for sleepovers, jumping on red-eyes, telling eachother stories that hurt to hear, about gasping, agonal breaths, hospice nurses, scars and bruises and scabs, and how skin papers shortly after a person passes. We will nod in agreement that it is as much an honor to witness a person leave this world as it is to watch a person come into it.”
― Kelly Corrigan, The Middle Place

“He defined me first, as parents do. Those early characterizations can become the shimmering self-image we embrace or the limited, stifling perception we rail against for a lifetime.”
― Kelly Corrigan, The Middle Place

“It is one thing to be a man's wife - quite another to be the mother of his children. In fact, once you become a mother, being a wife seems like a game you once played or a self-help book you were overly impressed with as a teenager that on second reading is puffy with common ideas. This was one of the many things I had learned since crossing over into the middle place - that sliver of time when childhood and parenthood overlap.”
― Kelly Corrigan, The Middle Place

“When you are in pain, and you see someone else in pain, there is really nothing as satisfying as giving them comfort in the night.”
― Kelly Corrigan, The Middle Place

“I don't know what to saw about a man who calls a perfectly adorable three-year old a fucker, but "my hero" comes to mind.”
― Kelly Corrigan, The Middle Place

“How seriously can I take myself? I'm just one of six billion people, right?”
― Kelly Corrigan, The Middle Place

“I envy my dad and his faith. I envy all people who have someone to beseech, who know where they're going, who sleep under the fluffy white comforter of belief.”
― Kelly Corrigan, The Middle Place

“He loved me the way only a nineteen-year old can- suddenly and deliriously.”
― Kelly Corrigan, The Middle Place

“I realized that making people feel irreplaceable was his gift.”
― Kelly Corrigan, The Middle Place

“Those early characterizations (Our parents give us) can become the shimmering self-image we embrace or the limited, stifling perception we rail against for a lifetime”
― Kelly Corrigan, The Middle Place

“I shift my position on the sofa, so my head is on a big, lumpy pillow in Greenie's lap and Georgia is leanign back against my middle and Claire is just about asleep on the floor. Allison and I catch eyes, and she tilts her head and smiles, and when I smile back, we both well up with tears, I think beause we both recognize that whatever else may be unfolding, this is happiness.”
― Kelly Corrigan, The Middle Place

“I have to pick up my kids. I have to register them for school. I have to pack their lunches and get their Hep B shots and wash their hands. They must be spotted on the stairs and potty trained and broken of the binkie. And if that relentless work runs right alongside gauging the risks of bladder surgery on a seventy-four-year-old, well, what did you think was gonna happen? What did you think being an adult was?”
― Kelly Corrigan, The Middle Place

“He defined me first, as parents do. Those early characterizations can become the shimmering self-image we embrace or the limited, stifling perception we rail against for a lifetime. In my case, he sees me as I would like to be seen. In fact, I’m not even sure what’s true about me, since I have always chosen to believe his version.”
― Kelly Corrigan, The Middle Place

“Or maybe, knowing that intercourse involved certain unsavory sights, smells, and sounds, God deliberately left the ingredients for alcohol lying around where man would undoubtedly find them.”
― Kelly Corrigan, The Middle Place

“A sick part of me actually wants the bad diagnosis, if only to prove that I know my body, that I am not a hypochondriac looking for unwarranted attention. And given the ongoing push-pull with my husband, who sees no danger in the world ('she's not going to crawl out the window') and me, whose imagination runs toward the catastrophic ('we're three floors up!'), I almost want the lump to be a tumor so he sees that sometimes fears are justified. But it's more than that.

I want to know what it would be like. I want to know how I would perform.”
― Kelly Corrigan, The Middle Place

“It all felt so good but also so contrived, like a play we were performing. Even saying the baby's name felt fraudulent. I think all the big moments⁠—good or bad⁠—are like this.”
― Kelly Corrigan, The Middle Place

“Maybe that's what happens, you go places and do things that are beyond your parents' capacity to imagine or understand, and that's how you start thinking of them as quaint and peripheral.”
― Kelly Corrigan, The Middle Place