Woman Last Seen in Her Thirties Quotes

“The problem was not that I had lost the ability to enjoy things.
It was that I had lost myself.”
― Camille Pagán, Woman Last Seen in Her Thirties

“Not your circus, not your clown, I reminded myself. Just because your instinct is to care doesn’t mean you have to.”
― Camille Pagán, Woman Last Seen in Her Thirties

“I once read that the recipe for a good life had but three ingredients: something to do, someone to love, and something to look forward to.”
― Camille Pagán, Woman Last Seen in Her Thirties

“Don’t you borrow trouble from tomorrow. Things have always worked out before, so there’s no reason to think this time will be any different.”
― Camille Pagán, Woman Last Seen in Her Thirties

“In third grade, Zoe announced that she thought it was "weird" that I didn't have a job like some of her friends' mothers. Little had changed over the years; she seemed unable to comprehend that willfully derailing oneself from a career-oriented track was not synonymous with being incompetent, unconfident, and unfulfilled.”
― Camille Pagán, Woman Last Seen in Her Thirties

“Maybe she was married, too, but was a compassionate cheater who didn’t chop down her family tree just because she wanted to stick her feathers in a new nest for a while.”
― Camille Pagán, Woman Last Seen in Her Thirties

“I had not taken particularly good care of myself over the years, and it wasn’t like I could get a free pass by wearing a pin that said, I look like this because I have been caring for everyone else.”
― Camille Pagán, Woman Last Seen in Her Thirties

“I allowed myself to admit what I had spent months denying: I had loved him so long that my love for him had become a part of me. I could no sooner undo it than I could rewrite my own genetic code.”
― Camille Pagán, Woman Last Seen in Her Thirties

“I was beginning to think waiting was often the worst idea. Sometimes the longer you thought about something, the harder it became to make a decision.”
― Camille Pagán, Woman Last Seen in Her Thirties

“Because I would be damned if I let another person's bad choice dictate my decisions.”
― Camille Pagán, Woman Last Seen in Her Thirties

“For now, I had the good fortune of more chances to fail and succeed, more love to give and receive - more life. And while I didn’t know what my future held, I would follow my mother’s lead. I would summon my strength and go find out what was next.”
― Camille Pagán, Woman Last Seen in Her Thirties

“when you think you are bypassing heartache, all you’re really doing is borrowing happiness from another day.”
― Camille Pagán, Woman Last Seen in Her Thirties

“It would have been better, I thought suddenly, if he had dropped dead instead of leaving me. Then I could have enjoyed the pure, unadulterated grief of being a widow.”
― Camille Pagán, Woman Last Seen in Her Thirties

“My mother’s death taught me that when you think you are bypassing heartache, all you’re really doing is borrowing happiness from another day.”
― Camille Pagán, Woman Last Seen in Her Thirties

“This hurts in more ways than one—and let it, I thought as I walked to his bed. At least you’re alive to feel the pain.”
― Camille Pagán, Woman Last Seen in Her Thirties

“There's a light in you...Don't blow it out before you've had a chance to see it.”
― Camille Pagán, Woman Last Seen in Her Thirties

“The problem was not that I had lost the ability to enjoy things. It was that I had lost myself.”
― Camille Pagán, Woman Last Seen in Her Thirties

“Then I closed my eyes and made another wish: that one day soon, I could tell my children I had inherited my mother’s ability to fold life’s bad moments into the good and believe it was enough.”
― Camille Pagán, Woman Last Seen in Her Thirties

“But for him to leave me for someone else-- well, that meant that he was in so much pain that he was willing to go to the most drastic extreme to feel better.”
― Camille Pagán, Woman Last Seen in Her Thirties

“I had been so fortunate to raise two healthy, interesting children, but my fortune seemed to resurrect as loss. How had it all flown by so fast?”
― Camille Pagán, Woman Last Seen in Her Thirties

“inherited my mother’s ability to fold life’s bad moments into the good and believe it was enough.”
― Camille Pagán, Woman Last Seen in Her Thirties

“recipe for a good life had but three ingredients: something to do, someone to love, and something to look forward to.”
― Camille Pagán, Woman Last Seen in Her Thirties

“But if there’s one thing I do believe in, it’s wiping the crap off your shoes and finding a fresh patch of grass to stand on. Let’s get moving.”
― Camille Pagán, Woman Last Seen in Her Thirties

“but true cacio e pepe is made only with pecorino cheese and black pepper,” he said, catching my eye. “The chef adds a bit of the water used to boil the pasta to mix it just before it’s served, and that gives it its creamy texture.”
― Camille Pagán, Woman Last Seen in Her Thirties