Meet Me at the Museum Quotes

“I understand now that loneliness is worse if there are people about than if there are not.”
― Anne Youngson, Meet Me at the Museum

“But I do not mind. I am like a man standing on a shore watching people he loves rowing a boat. As long as they are safe in the boat, nothing else is so important.”
― Anne Youngson, Meet Me at the Museum

“You have a gift for finding joy in small moments, which is a thing I used to have, but have lost,”
― Anne Youngson, Meet Me at the Museum

“We should look inside ourselves for fulfillment. It is not fair to burden children or grandchildren with the obligation to make us whole. Our obligation to them is to make them safe and provide them with an education. Karin can do that alone, if she chooses. She owes no one anything else. She owes it to herself to do what is best for her. When I had said this, Mary kissed me. I can’t remember the last time she did that. Or the last time I enjoyed a conversation more.”
― Anne Youngson, Meet Me at the Museum

“When I look at Karin now, I wonder if I am suffering from post-traumatic joy.”
― Anne Youngson, Meet Me at the Museum

“I was irritated by the simplicity of my mother’s view of the world when I was younger, but now that I know how hard it is to keep upright, cheerful, balanced, and in control, which is expected of us as adults, I can appreciate the mechanisms she used to achieve this.”
― Anne Youngson, Meet Me at the Museum

“We may want to be other than we are, but we do not want to unsettle the opinion people have already formed; maybe to replace it with a lesser opinion.”
― Anne Youngson, Meet Me at the Museum

“The sky was magnificent. I have always loved the sky and I do not take notice of it often enough.”
― Anne Youngson, Meet Me at the Museum

“Our letters have meant so much to us because we have both arrived at the same point in our lives. More behind us than ahead of us. Paths chosen that define us. Enough time left to change.”
― Anne Youngson, Meet Me at the Museum

“Instead, I had to compose a letter. I could picture you reading the letter and I imagined you would do this slowly and carefully, so I felt I needed to write my letter to you slowly and carefully. I had to be sure I had read yours to Professor Glob slowly and carefully so that I could be sure to address the points you made. So we have gone on. We have written at length and thoughtfully, and to do this, we have both had to read the letters we received in a thoughtful way.”
― Anne Youngson, Meet Me at the Museum

“After the ceremony we went to a hotel, and there was food (which I did not cook and therefore enjoyed)”
― Anne Youngson, Meet Me at the Museum

“I can see that living alone, as you do, leaves empty space around you, and that can feel lonely. Living together with other people, as I do, can feel lonely, too.”
― Anne Youngson, Meet Me at the Museum

“When I wake in the night and wonder if, after all, I have wasted my chances and should have done something different with the time and the talents I have been given, I am often terrified by how small are the things I study and how big and beyond understanding is everything they represent.”
― Anne Youngson, Meet Me at the Museum

“Our letters have meant so much to us because we have both arrived at the same point in our lives. More behind us than ahead of us.”
― Anne Youngson, Meet Me at the Museum

“Superstition is such a scornful word, applied by rational people to anything that appears not to be rational belief, not seeing there is beauty and meaning and purpose in putting aside everything that can be explained and imagining something quite miraculous...”
― Anne Youngson, Meet Me at the Museum

“I only enjoy talking when I have a topic I want to talk about to someone whose reaction I am interested in.”
― Anne Youngson, Meet Me at the Museum

“It is often the case that when I am most anxious about how I will be remarked upon by other people, I turn out to be the most likely not to be noticed at all.”
― Anne Youngson, Meet Me at the Museum

“We should look inside ourselves for fulfillment. It is not fair to burden children or grandchildren with the obligation to make us whole. Our obligation to them is to make them safe and provide them with an education”
― Anne Youngson, Meet Me at the Museum

“I have found that it is no use to write an email longer than three or four lines, because whoever receives it will not read to the end. Instead, I had to compose a letter. I could picture you reading the letter and I imagined you would do this slowly and carefully, so I felt I needed to write my letter to you slowly and carefully.”
― Anne Youngson, Meet Me at the Museum

“Why had I led the life I had led, done so little, achieved so little? When my life is of such significance to me, how is it I could not claim any significance for it in the eyes of a disinterested observer? What life, if I had made a rational choice, would I have chosen?”
― Anne Youngson, Meet Me at the Museum

“I thought how private we have all become. How self-sufficient. Of course, we are all members of whatever society we live in, but not in the way the Tollund Man’s contemporaries would have been members of the community they lived in. They would have been cogs, wheels, brackets, levers, pulleys, each making their society work according to their skills and position. Now we are like ball bearings, complete in ourselves and joining other ball bearings only to form shapes that suit our purpose.”
― Anne Youngson, Meet Me at the Museum

“The preservation of an object of beauty carries meaning, I think, beyond the physical appearance, to those who look at it and handle it after those who first made it and owned it are gone.”
― Anne Youngson, Meet Me at the Museum

“my lifetime are completely lost. The expression”
― Anne Youngson, Meet Me at the Museum

“Even”
― Anne Youngson, Meet Me at the Museum

“ritual is a very important part of believing in a myth and that myths are very important for giving comfort and making sense of the world.”
― Anne Youngson, Meet Me at the Museum

“I find I do not often have anything to say which it would interest other people to hear. Though other people talk about things I am not interested in and I am happy to listen, so maybe it is not others’ lack of the will to listen but my lack of interest in speaking that is at fault.”
― Anne Youngson, Meet Me at the Museum

“Why had I led the life I had led, done so little, achieved so little? When my life is of such significance to me, how is it I could not claim any significance for it in the eyes of a disinterested observer? What life, if I had made a rational choice, would I have chosen? If I hadn’t gone to the Young Farmers’ disco and”
― Anne Youngson, Meet Me at the Museum

“to the hilt”
― Anne Youngson, Meet Me at the Museum

“If I had not been so tired, I would have gone at once to find the beef drippings and the socks. I knew pretty well where both of them would be. I realize, of course, that it is because I have always gone at once to find the things Edward wants that he can never find them. He has no capacity for searching; why should he have, when he has only to call my name and whatever it is will be found?”
― Anne Youngson, Meet Me at the Museum

“one sentence and the next.”
― Anne Youngson, Meet Me at the Museum