Everyone is Beautiful Quotes

“Nobody was perfect. Not even close. And everybody had wrinkles from smiling and squinting and craining their necks. Everybody has marks on their bodies from years of living- a trail of life left on them. Evidence of all the adventures and sleepless nights and practical jokes and heartbreaks that had made them who they are.”
― Katherine Center, Everyone is Beautiful

“There is no better people-watching than at the airport: the whole world packed into such a tight space, moving fast with all their essentials in their rolling bags. And what caught my attention, as I took a few breaths and lay my eyes on the crowds, were all the imperfections. Everybody had them. Every single person that walked past me had some kind of flaw. Bushy eyebrows, moles, flared nostrils, crooked teeth, crows'-feet, hunched backs, dowagers' humps, double chins, floppy earlobes, nose hairs, potbellies, scars, nicotine stains, upper arm fat, trick knees, saddlebags, collapsed arches, bruises, warts, puffy eyes, pimples. Nobody was perfect. Not even close. And everybody had wrinkles from smiling and squinting and craning their necks. Everybody had marks on their bodies from years of living - a trail of life left on them, evidence of all the adventures and sleepless nights and practical jokes and heartbreaks that had made them who they were.

In that moment, I suddenly loved us all the more for our flaws, for being broken and human, for being embarrassed and lonely, for being hopeful or tired or disappointed or sick or brave or angry. For being who we were, for making the world interesting. It was a good reminder that the human condition is imperfection. And that's how it's supposed to be.”
― Katherine Center, Everyone is Beautiful

“And here, after all that, is what I have come to believe about beauty: Laughter is beautiful. Kindness is beautiful. Cellulite is beautiful. Softness and plumpness and roundness are beautiful. It's more important to be interesting, to be vivid, and to be adventurous, than to sit pretty for pictures. A woman's soft tummy is a miracle of nature. Beauty comes from tenderness. Beauty comes from variety, from specificity, from the fact that no person in the world looks exactly like anyone else. Beauty comes from the tragedy that each person's life is destined to be lost to time. I believe women are too hard on themselves. I believe that when you love someone, she becomes beautiful to you. I believe the eyes see everything through the heart - and nothing in the world feels as good as resting them on someone you love. I have trained my eyes to look for beauty, and I've gotten very good at finding it. You can argue and tell me it's not true, but I really don't care what anyone says. I have come, at last, to believe in the title I came up with for the book: Everyone Is Beautiful.”
― Katherine Center, Everyone is Beautiful

“I believe women are too hard on themselves. I believe that when you love someone, she becomes beautiful to you. I believe the eyes see everything through the heart. Nothing in the world feels as good as resting them on someone you love.”
― Katherine Center, Everyone is Beautiful

“Because the truth was, there was a dark underbelly of terror to motherhood. You loved your children with such an overwhelming fierceness that you were absolutely vulnerable at every moment of every day: They could be taken from you. Somehow, you could lose them. You could stop at the corner to buy a newspaper when a drunk driver veered onto the sidewalk. You could feed your child an E. coli-tainted hamburger. You could turn your head for a second while one darted out into the street. The threats to your child were infinite. And the thing was, if any of your children's lives were ruined, even a little bit, yours wold be, too.”
― Katherine Center, Everyone is Beautiful

“The human condition is imperfection. And that's how it's supposed to be.”
― Katherine Center, Everyone is Beautiful

“And here, after all that, is what I have come to believe about beauty: Laughter is beautiful. Kindness is beautiful. Cellulite is beautiful. Softness and plumpness and roundness are beautiful. It’s more important to be interesting, to be vivid, and to be adventurous than to sit pretty for pictures. The soft tummy of a woman is a miracle of nature. Beauty comes from tenderness. Beauty comes from variety, from specificity, from the fact that no person in the world looks exactly like anyone else. Beauty comes from the tragedy that each person’s life is destined to be lost to time. I believe women are too hard on themselves. I believe that when you love someone, she becomes beautiful to you. I believe the eyes see everything through the heart, that nothing in the world feels as good as resting them on someone you love. I have trained my eyes to look for beauty, and I’ve gotten very good at finding it. You can argue and tell me it’s not true, but I really don’t care what anyone says. I have come at last to believe in the title of the book: Everyone Is Beautiful.”
― Katherine Center, Everyone is Beautiful

“It had not occured to me to mourn losing those things until now. I had done each of those things, somewhere along the way, for a last time - without realizing it was the last time. And even after I knew that I was no longer a child, somehow I'd assumed those things could have come back to me. Or that I could have gone back to them. But watching the movies on this day, I became aware of infinite losses.”
― Katherine Center, Everyone is Beautiful

“Really, when I look back on it, I did exactly what I had set out to do. I changed my life. I woke myself up. I rediscovered passions of every variety. I forced myself to take a little time. I found a way to bring some of who I used to be into who I was.”
― Katherine Center, Everyone is Beautiful

“That was the tricky part. You poured inordinate amounts of time and attention and affection into your kids, but the result was indirect. You didn't point out a cat to your one-year-old and then watch him, minutes later, say 'Cat.' Instead, you pointed out a hundred cats to your one-year-old and then, one day, watched him point to a cat and say 'Mama.”
― Katherine Center, Everyone is Beautiful

“Nobody was perfect. Not even close. And everybody had wrinkles from smiling and squinting and craning their necks. Everybody had marks on their bodies from years of living—a trail of life left on them, evidence of all the adventures and sleepless nights and practical jokes and heartbreaks that had made them who they were.”
― Katherine Center, Everyone Is Beautiful

“I believe the eyes see everything through the heart—and nothing in the world feels as good as resting them on someone you love.”
― Katherine Center, Everyone Is Beautiful

“I assume you’re all here because you’re missing something in your lives,” Nelson said to us, as he brought the first class to its close. We were gathered around the light table. “You’re hoping I might be able to help you find what you’re looking for. Well, let me tell you something. Photography will break your heart. You’ll either have no talent for it, which will be awkward and make you feel worthless, or you’ll be great at it, which will be worse.” He was moving around us as a group, seeming to think out loud. “But whatever you’re looking for,” he continued, “I can guarantee you’re not going to find it.”
― Katherine Center, Everyone is Beautiful

“Everybody had marks on their bodies from years of living—a trail of life left on them, evidence of all the adventures and sleepless nights and practical jokes and heartbreaks that had made them who they were. In that moment, I suddenly loved us all the more for our flaws, for being broken and human, for being embarrassed and lonely, for being hopeful or tired or disappointed or sick or brave or angry. For being who we were, for making the world interesting. It was a good reminder that the human condition is imperfection. And that’s how it’s supposed to be.”
― Katherine Center, Everyone Is Beautiful

“And here, after all that, is what I have come to believe about beauty: Laughter is beautiful. Kindness is beautiful. Cellulite is beautiful. Softness and plumpness and roundness are beautiful. It’s more important to be interesting, to be vivid, and to be adventurous, than to sit pretty for pictures. A woman’s soft tummy is a miracle of nature. Beauty comes from tenderness. Beauty comes from variety, from specificity, from the fact that no person in the world looks exactly like anyone else. Beauty comes from the tragedy that each person’s life is destined to be lost to time. I believe women are too hard on themselves. I believe that when you love someone, she becomes beautiful to you. I believe the eyes see everything through the heart—and nothing in the world feels as good as resting them on someone you love. I have trained my eyes to look for beauty, and I’ve gotten very good at finding it. You can argue and tell me it’s not true, but I really don’t care what anyone says. I have come, at last, to believe in the title I came up with for the book: Everyone Is Beautiful.”
― Katherine Center, Everyone Is Beautiful

“Isn’t that the number one rule of parenting? Don’t Make Things Worse?”
― Katherine Center, Everyone Is Beautiful

“Which is not to say I couldn’t be talked into it. I could. But I was coming more and more to believe that women’s desire was different from men’s. Women’s desire seemed to come from their feelings—a physical ache in the heart that ravaged the body. And I confess it had been awhile since I’d felt anything like that.”
― Katherine Center, Everyone Is Beautiful

“Though the old me, actually, had no place in my current life. If I’d stopped to think about it, I’d have known that. But I didn’t stop to think about it. I was moving too fast.”
― Katherine Center, Everyone Is Beautiful

“This is crazy!” I went on. “Think about what you’re doing! What about your rose garden? What about the gate you and Beverly put in between our backyards? What about the dent in Tommy’s door from when I threw that shoe at him? What about the growth-chart lines on the kitchen doorway? What about the crepe myrtle you planted in the spot where we buried Bailey?” my voice had ratcheted up a bit. The tears started to spill over. “Mom!” I was pleading now. “You can’t do this! You will always regret it.”
― Katherine Center, Everyone Is Beautiful

“I have come to believe about beauty: Laughter is beautiful. Kindness is beautiful. Cellulite is beautiful. Softness and plumpness and roundness are beautiful. It’s more important to be interesting, to be vivid, and to be adventurous, than to sit pretty for pictures.”
― Katherine Center, Everyone Is Beautiful

“Everybody had marks on their bodies from years of living—a trail of life left on them, evidence of all the adventures and sleepless nights and practical jokes and heartbreaks that had made them who they were.”
― Katherine Center, Everyone Is Beautiful

“after trying so relentlessly to recover that lost version of myself that I couldn’t stop mourning, I finally found a stopping place—and settled out at a mom size. Not a high-school-girl size, not a college-girl size, but a mature, woman’s, now-I-really-get-it size. I got stronger, and maybe trimmer, but I never actually returned—as I confess I’d been hoping—to my pre-mom self. Which made sense. Because I was not that self anymore, and I was no longer even close to that self. In the end, that was a good thing.”
― Katherine Center, Everyone Is Beautiful

“It’s so easy to think of your parents as existing solely for you—to see their actions only in terms of how well they address your needs. Even as an adult, it’s hard to think of your parents as people with goals and circumstances different from your own. As I sat at the table, pouting, I suddenly thought about all the things my mother had lost when she and my father moved: her garden, her home, her friends, the life she’d worked so long to build.”
― Katherine Center, Everyone Is Beautiful

“Shower every day,” she said. “Brush and floss. Blow-dry your hair and wear something nice. Don’t forget lipstick and mascara, at the very least. Do not look at old photos. Do not hold articles of his clothing to your face. Do not close your eyes and try to pretend that he is sitting across the room reading the paper just so that you can feel okay again, even for a second. Do not sit in his desk chair, put on his glasses, put his shaving cream on your face, or carry his toothbrush around in your pocket. Do not read his books. Do not stand among the clothes in his closet. Do not write letters to him at night. Stay in the present, or, if at all possible, in the future. There’s nowhere else you can go.” I”
― Katherine Center, Everyone Is Beautiful

“tried to take a parent-and-let-parent approach to people and their kids. I had become far less judgmental over the years. Within a certain range of acceptability, we were all just doing the best we could and, really, given a basic foundation of love and some Richard Scarry books, kids would be okay.”
― Katherine Center, Everyone Is Beautiful

“The threats to your child were infinite. And the thing was, if any of your children’s lives were ruined, even a little bit, yours would be, too.”
― Katherine Center, Everyone Is Beautiful

“It had not occurred to me to mourn losing those things until now. I had done each of those things, somewhere along the way, for a last time—without realizing it was the last time. And even after I knew that I was no longer a child, somehow I’d assumed those things could have come back to me.”
― Katherine Center, Everyone Is Beautiful