Today Will Be Different Quotes

“I don’t mean to ruin the ending for you, sweet child, but life is one long headwind. To make any kind of impact requires self-will bordering on madness. The world will be hostile, it will be suspicious of your intent, it will misinterpret you, it will inject you with doubt, it will flatter you into self-sabotage. My God, I’m making it sound so glamorous and personal! What the world is, more than anything? It’s indifferent.”
“Say amen to that,” Spencer said.
“But you have a vision. You put a frame around it. You sign your name anyway. That’s the risk. That’s the leap. That’s the madness: thinking anyone’s going to care.”
― Maria Semple, Today Will Be Different

“That was happiness. Not the framed greatest hits, but the moments between.”
― Maria Semple, Today Will Be Different

“There’s a phenomenon I call the Helpless Traveler. If you’re traveling with someone who’s confident, organized, and decisive you become the Helpless Traveler: “Are we there yet?” “My bags are too heavy.” “My feet are getting blisters.” “This isn’t what I ordered.” We’ve all been that person. But if the person you’re traveling with is helpless, then you become the one able to decipher train schedules, spend five hours walking on marble museum floors without complaint, order fearlessly from foreign menus, and haggle with crooked cabdrivers. Every person has it in him to be either the Competent Traveler or the Helpless Traveler. Because Joe is so clearheaded and sharp, I’ve been able to go through life as the Helpless Traveler. Which, now that I think about it, might not be such a good thing. It’s a question for Joe. His”
― Maria Semple, Today Will Be Different

“Smell the soup, cool the soup,” Timby said. “Huh?” “It’s what they teach us in school when we’re upset. Smell the soup.” He took a deep breath in. “Cool the soup.” He blew out.”
― Maria Semple, Today Will Be Different

“You know how your brain turns to mush? How it starts when you’re pregnant? You laugh, full of wonder and conspiracy, and you chide yourself, Me and my pregnancy brain! Then you give birth and your brain doesn’t return? But you’re breast-feeding, so you laugh, as if you’re a member of an exclusive club? Me and my nursing brain! But then you stop nursing and the terrible truth descends: Your good brain is never coming back. You’ve traded vocabulary, lucidity, and memory for motherhood. You know how you’re in the middle of a sentence and you realize at the end you’re going to need to call up a certain word and you’re worried you won’t be able to, but you’re already committed so you hurtle along and then pause because you’ve arrived at the end but the word hasn’t? And it’s not even a ten-dollar word you’re after, like polemic or shibboleth, but a two-dollar word, like distinctive, so you just end up saying amazing?
Which is how you join the gang of nitwits who describe everything as amazing.”
― Maria Semple, Today Will Be Different

“The world isn’t your friend,” Joe told Eleanor. “It’s not designed to go your way. All you can do is make the decision to muscle through and fight the trend.”
― Maria Semple, Today Will Be Different

“You try your best, or you don't try your best. The mountains don't care.”
― Maria Semple, Today Will Be Different

“When people die, their handwriting dies too. You don’t think about that.”
― Maria Semple, Today Will Be Different

“As far as I’m concerned, the only thing sweeter than seeing a friend is that friend canceling on me.”
― Maria Semple, Today Will Be Different

“Today will be different. Today I will be present. Today, anyone I speak to, I will look them in the eye and listen deeply. Today I’ll play a board game with Timby. I’ll initiate sex with Joe. Today I will take pride in my appearance. I’ll shower, get dressed in proper clothes, and change into yoga clothes only for yoga, which today I will actually attend. Today I won’t swear. I won’t talk about money. Today there will be an ease about me. My face will be relaxed, its resting place a smile. Today I will radiate calm. Kindness and self-control will abound. Today I will buy local. Today I will be my best self, the person I’m capable of being. Today will be different.”
― Maria Semple, Today Will Be Different

“There was no relief deeper than being loved by the person who’d known you the longest.”
― Maria Semple, Today Will Be Different

“One thing that happens when you have an alcoholic for a parent is you grow up the child of an alcoholic. ... For a quick trip around the bases, it means you blame yourself for everything, you avoid reality, you can't trust people, you're hungry to please. Which isn't all bad: perfectionism makes the straight-A student; lack of trust begets self-sufficiency; low self-esteem can be a terrific motivator; if everyone were so gung-ho on reality, there'd be no art.”
― Maria Semple, Today Will Be Different

“How's your day so far?"
"Oh, can't complain," he said. "You?"
"Can complain, but won't.”
― Maria Semple, Today Will Be Different

“In the middle of one of her self-help phases, Ivy had once proclaimed that underneath all anger was fear. I’d long since wondered what, if anything, was underneath all fear.
I knew then: If underneath anger was fear, then underneath fear was love. Everything came down to the terror of losing what you love.”
― Maria Semple, Today Will Be Different

“As everybody knows, being raised Catholic with half a brain means becoming an atheist.”
― Maria Semple, Today Will Be Different

“How do I break it to you that people aren't predictable? That life is confounding and sadistic in its cruelty? That when things go your way, it never makes you as happy as you'd expected, but when things go against you, it's a cold-water jolt, an unshakable outrage that dogs you forever.”
― Maria Semple, Today Will Be Different

“Pain I'm good with. It's discomfort I can't handle.”
― Maria Semple, Today Will Be Different

“You know how you’re in the middle of a sentence and you realize at the end you’re going to need to call up a certain word and you’re worried you won’t be able to, but you’re already committed so you hurtle along and then pause because you’ve arrived at the end but the word hasn’t? And it’s not even a ten-dollar word you’re after, like polemic or shibboleth, but a two-dollar word, like distinctive, so you just end up saying amazing?”
― Maria Semple, Today Will Be Different

“A live concert needs to be listened to live. Otherwise, it’s like eating day-old salad.”
― Maria Semple, Today Will Be Different

“But you have a vision. You put a frame around it. You sign your name anyway. That's the risk. That's the leap.”
― Maria Semple, Today Will Be Different

“You know how your brain turns to mush? How it starts when you’re pregnant? You laugh, full of wonder and conspiracy, and you chide yourself, Me and my pregnancy brain! Then you give birth and your brain doesn’t return? But you’re breast-feeding, so you laugh, as if you’re a member of an exclusive club? Me and my nursing brain! But then you stop nursing and the terrible truth descends: Your good brain is never coming back. You’ve traded vocabulary, lucidity, and memory for motherhood.”
― Maria Semple, Today Will Be Different

“If you truly believed you had a benevolent bus driver, and you were certain he was taking you somewhere good, you could just settle in and appreciate the ride.”
― Maria Semple, Today Will Be Different

“There’s a phenomenon I call the Helpless Traveler. If you’re traveling with someone who’s confident, organized, and decisive you become the Helpless Traveler: “Are we there yet?” “My bags are too heavy.” “My feet are getting blisters.” “This isn’t what I ordered.” We’ve all been that person. But if the person you’re traveling with is helpless, then you become the one able to decipher train schedules, spend five hours walking on marble museum floors without complaint, order fearlessly from foreign menus, and haggle with crooked cabdrivers. Every person has it in him to be either the Competent Traveler or the Helpless Traveler.”
― Maria Semple, Today Will Be Different

“That was happiness. Not the framed greatest hits, but the moments in between. At the time, I hadn't pegged them as being particularly happy. But now, looking back at those phantom snapshots, I'm struck by my calm, my ease, the evident comfort with my life. I'm happy in retrospect.”
― Maria Semple, Today Will Be Different

“I asked Joe if he hated Ivy and Bucky. He said, “That would make as much sense as hating a rattlesnake. You don’t hate rattlesnakes; you avoid them.”
― Maria Semple, Today Will Be Different

“My whole life, I’ve been liked. Okay, I’ll say it: I’ve been adored. I don’t understand why, on account of my disgraceful personality,”
― Maria Semple, Today Will Be Different

“life is one long headwind. To make any kind of impact requires self-will bordering on madness.”
― Maria Semple, Today Will Be Different

“Because the other way wasn’t working. The waking up just to get the day over with until it was time for bed. The grinding it out was a disgrace, an affront to the honor and long shot of being alive at all.”
― Maria Semple, Today Will Be Different

“I ran to Joe and pulled him in. I pushed my face into his jacket and breathed in the wool and dry-cleaning. Joe’s height was always a narcotic for me, the way my head hit him at the chest. I dug my fingers under his shoulder blades and turned my cheek so my nose touched flesh. The dampness of his clavicle, the tickle of his chest hair. The smell of Joe. My man.”
― Maria Semple, Today Will Be Different

“Actually, I bite the Milk Duds into four pieces and spit them back into the popcorn so they’re smaller, giving me a better popcorn-to-Milk-Dud ratio. Yes, they’re covered in saliva, but it’s my saliva. Though I can see how, to someone reaching into the popcorn he said he wasn’t going to eat, it could be an issue.”
― Maria Semple, Today Will Be Different