Go Gentle Quotes

“me to roll with whatever life throws at me.” “Void of emotion.” “That’s a common misconception about Stoicism. It’s not Keep Calm and Carry On. It’s Change Your Perception So You Never Have to Keep Calm and Carry On. Stoics are very passionate people. The key is to be correct in your passions.”
― Maria Semple, Go Gentle

“philosophy is the love of knowledge. Philosophers use that love of knowledge to perceive reality clearly.”
― Maria Semple, Go Gentle

“That’s what’s so rad about acceptance,” I said. “Once you truly accept all the shit that happened to you, you can get to work on everything that still is available. But even acceptance isn’t enough. You have to love it. Nietzsche said, Amor fati. Love fate. You have to love what happened to you.”
― Maria Semple, Go Gentle

“I was all over the place. Which is what happens when I get started on Stoicism. Fueled by enthusiasm, I talk faster and faster, bouncing between subjects, repeating myself. It's like running downhill. At some point, momentum takes over and stopping is impossible. All I can do is keep going and pray I've got a shred of dignity left when I reach the bottom.”
― Maria Semple, Go Gentle

“Epictetus says to think of ourselves as actors in a play. We can’t choose our roles, and they can be switched at any time without warning.”
― Maria Semple, Go Gentle

“My enjoyment of ballet is inversely proportional to how badly I have to pee.” “Aren’t you all-woman?” “Compliment accepted.”
― Maria Semple, Go Gentle

“When your mind is popping and all you want to do is think, nothing beats the ballet. And nothing makes you feel more blessed to be a New Yorker than Lincoln Center at 7:25.”
― Maria Semple, Go Gentle

“We want women like us. Women who present as scary, but have good hearts. Women who know how to get shit done. Women who, despite our age, share a dirty little secret: we’re just getting started.”
― Maria Semple, Go Gentle

“I’ve learned the hard way that when life leaves you for dead, it’s always the thing you never saw coming.”
― Maria Semple, Go Gentle

“I was once walking down the Strip in Vegas,” Blanche said. “Outside the Mirage there was a billboard. It read, ‘The Mirage Buffet. Imagine it. Eat it.’ I thought, that’s rich people in a nutshell. Imagine it. Eat it.”
― Maria Semple, Go Gentle

“She was the type of woman you never saw in New York, certainly not on the Upper East Side: one who’d stopped trying. Her whole air was a throw-down that said, “Come at me, haters.”
― Maria Semple, Go Gentle

“Women. You can’t accuse us of not being practical.”
― Maria Semple, Go Gentle

“A tragic, estrogen-free trio trying to put our best face on the realization society is done with us and we’re destined to die alone? No, and bite your tongue.”
― Maria Semple, Go Gentle

“An unimpeachably intentional, highly curated, feminist old folks’ home?”
― Maria Semple, Go Gentle

“But how you do anything is how you do everything, and one might say my life’s work has been chasing the Platonic ideal.”
― Maria Semple, Go Gentle

“know there’s something called Paris Derangement Syndrome. It’s where Japanese tourists have spent their whole lives building up Paris in their imaginations and when they get here, they go into shock.”
― Maria Semple, Go Gentle

“thought about it. “When people get older, they become more like themselves. So yes, this is what she was like. But no, she wasn’t always this bad.”
― Maria Semple, Go Gentle

“Seneca: We suffer more in imagination than in reality.”
― Maria Semple, Go Gentle

“Seneca: The greatest remedy for anger is delay.”
― Maria Semple, Go Gentle

“Fear is the mistaken belief I can’t handle an event in the future.”
― Maria Semple, Go Gentle

“Love,” I said turning, “is friendship gone mad.”
― Maria Semple, Go Gentle

“Epictetus says to think of ourselves as actors in a play. We can’t choose our roles, and they can be switched at any time without warning. Once we’re recast, our job isn’t to question or complain, but to accept and shine. If my role in the marriage had changed, I was determined to play to the cheap seats.”
― Maria Semple, Go Gentle

“My gateway book was William Irvine’s A Guide to the Good Life. (Which I still have, and cherish; by”
― Maria Semple, Go Gentle

“Change the judgment to change the emotion.”
― Maria Semple, Go Gentle

“Stoicism tells us it’s not a two-step process (event + emotional reaction). But a three-step process (event + our judgment of the event + emotional reaction). What we’re having the emotional freakout about is not the event itself, but what we tell ourselves about the event.”
― Maria Semple, Go Gentle

“No, no, no. Intuition tells me you’d be perfect. We want women like us. Women who present as scary, but have good hearts. Women who know how to get shit done. Women who, despite our age, share a dirty little secret: we’re just getting started.”
― Maria Semple, Go Gentle

“Gorgeous, shallow creature, Viv! Reliably irritable, bereft of interests. Scroller, consumer, influencee. That Fate gave me Viv as a daughter provides a daily fountain of dismay and delight.”
― Maria Semple, Go Gentle

“Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
― Maria Semple, Go Gentle

“want women like us. Women who present as scary, but have good hearts. Women who know how to get shit done. Women who, despite our age, share a dirty little secret: we’re just getting started.” “Blanche Falk,” she said, sticking out her hand. “Adora Hazzard,” I said, taking it.”
― Maria Semple, Go Gentle: The joyful new novel from the author of Where’d You Go Bernadette

“Acceptance isn’t passive. It’s active. Acceptance is an act of courage. It’s not the end. It’s the beginning.”
― Maria Semple, Go Gentle