I'm Fine and Neither Are You Quotes

“It takes courage to be yourself when everyone expects you to be someone else.”
― Camille Pagán, I'm Fine and Neither Are You

“Look beyond what is missing and be thankful for all that remains.”
― Camille Pagán, I'm Fine and Neither Are You

“This is not a test. Life is messy and sometimes tragic and often just plain hard for a woman to weather. But when you step back for a moment, the whole of it is incredibly beautiful—and that is what we must choose to focus on.”
― Camille Pagán, I'm Fine and Neither Are You

“Change was a privilege reserved for people whose families didn’t rely on them for food, shelter, and health insurance. I thought she’d know that by now.”
― Camille Pagán, I'm Fine and Neither Are You

“Damn it, if only life came with a rewind button. I would do it all so very differently.”
― Camille Pagán, I'm Fine and Neither Are You

“I wanted to tell myself it didn't matter. Happiness was nothing but a fleeting state-- a modern construct used to justify personal fulfillment over the greater good.
But deep down, I knew this wasn't true. To me, at least, the word happy was shorthand for a life with meaning.”
― Camille Pagán, I'm Fine and Neither Are You

“But why was marriage so much work? It didn’t used to be. And if it did require such effort, shouldn’t the fruit of that labor be a stronger, more satisfying union?”
― Camille Pagán, I'm Fine and Neither Are You

“But something between us had shifted over the course of our marriage, particularly the last two to three years. We had gone from being lovers to best friends to . . . roommates who routinely irritated each other. If I was honest with myself, that was what it felt like most of the time.”
― Camille Pagán, I'm Fine and Neither Are You

“I had recently read that making it through mothering alive required putting on your own oxygen mask before assisting others. Alas—I had failed to make the connection between survival and sunscreen.”
― Camille Pagán, I'm Fine and Neither Are You

“Above my family, the sun was beaming in the cloudless blue sky. I wondered if Jenny was up there somewhere, or in the air around me, or at least a part of the universe somehow. Wherever she was, I only hoped she knew I had received her parting gift—the ability to look beyond what was missing and be thankful for all that remained.”
― Camille Pagán, I'm Fine and Neither Are You

“At once I understood that I had been looking at things with the right intention but from the wrong angle. My marriage was imperfect and my job lacked meaning, but I had been searching for complicated solutions instead of addressing the common denominator in both equations - me. Moreover, I'd been approaching my life as a zero-sum game. As Alex had just pointed out, meeting my own needs for a change didn't mean my family would collapse or sink into bankruptcy-level debt. There were certain parts of my marriage that might never be fixed - wasn't that what "for better or for worse" was all about? - but that wouldn't necessarily put Sanjay and me on a one-way dinghy to divorce island. And even if we did split, that wouldn't be the end of everything. It would hurt like hell, but it wouldn't erase the good times we'd had My children would still have two parents who loved them and who would not opt out of their lives just because things were hard.”
― Camille Pagán, I'm Fine and Neither Are You

“We had once been wildly in love; we had once been partners in this life. I couldn't pinpoint the exact moment that had stopped being true, but pretending I was fine and our marriage would fix itself wouldn't get us back to that place.”
― Camille Pagán, I'm Fine and Neither Are You

“Most people say they want the truth. What they mean is that they want it if it's palatable.”
― Camille Pagán, I'm Fine and Neither Are You

“All the same, there was no need to prime my children to be paranoid—not when I was perfectly happy to fret for all of us.”
― Camille Pagán, I'm Fine and Neither Are You

“Motherhood had primed me to anticipate unlikely worst-case scenarios, and I tried to reassure myself that my internal disaster sensor was on overdrive, as per usual.”
― Camille Pagán, I'm Fine and Neither Are You

“Which in turn reminded you that the bad you had was your choice, and better than the alternative.”
― Camille Pagán, I'm Fine and Neither Are You

“I loved my husband. I loved my kids. I mostly liked my life. But I was so damn tired.”
― Camille Pagán, I'm Fine and Neither Are You

“Upset? Upset was realizing your best black dress was now several shades of maroon because you had entrusted the laundry to your husband, who had confirmed your long-standing suspicion that high standardized test scores had an inverse relationship to practical intelligence.”
― Camille Pagán, I'm Fine and Neither Are You

“There was a reason that instead of daydreaming about my husband taking me passionately against a wall, I fantasized about replacing him with a wife.”
― Camille Pagán, I'm Fine and Neither Are You

“who had confirmed your long-standing suspicion that high standardized test scores had an inverse relationship to practical intelligence.”
― Camille Pagán, I'm Fine and Neither Are You

“As I would quickly come to realize, having a child—and then another—was a professional liability for a person like me, which is to say a woman.”
― Camille Pagán, I'm Fine and Neither Are You

“And a house with smooth ceilings and a bathroom on the first floor. We could sock away more than a few dollars for the kids’ college funds and max out our retirement contributions. I knew I was supposed to be leaning in—these were important years in my career, and I wasn’t getting any younger. If what I’d read was to be believed, opportunities to vault myself to the next level would be few and far between. But . . . I wasn’t so sure I wanted to upgrade my wardrobe and get a haircut that said business and perfect my ability to hobnob with the ultrarich. I was equally unenthused about the possibility of working even harder, at least at this particular job at this particular juncture, and regularly being away from my husband and children. Because now I knew—really and truly knew in a way I hadn’t before—that it could all end in an instant. And if, God forbid, that happened, would I take my dying breaths feeling glad for getting a chance to fly business class?”
― Camille Pagán, I'm Fine and Neither Are You

“It takes courage to be yourself when everyone expects you to be someone else. I’m just glad I still have the opportunity to make that decision.”
― Camille Pagán, I'm Fine and Neither Are You

“the ability to look beyond what was missing and be thankful for all that remained.”
― Camille Pagán, I'm Fine and Neither Are You

“But my sudden desire to be somewhere else was probably less envy and more the result of my second child screaming through the half-inch gap where the bathroom door failed to meet the frame. “Mommy! Mom! Maaahhhmaaay!”
― Camille Pagán, I'm Fine and Neither Are You

“friends to . . . roommates who routinely irritated each other. If I was honest with myself, that was what it felt like most of the time.”
― Camille Pagán, I'm Fine and Neither Are You

“I had gone through CPR training right before I had Stevie, but like so many other things stored in my mind, motherhood had overwritten that file.”
― Camille Pagán, I'm Fine and Neither Are You

“magazine editor, Pagán has written for the New York Times; O, The Oprah Magazine; Parade; Real”
― Camille Pagán, I'm Fine and Neither Are You

“As long as I had been conscious, I had been aware my parents disliked each other. I wasn’t even sure they had ever loved each other—though at some point her wild-child soul must have been attracted to his workaholic ways, as they had chosen to marry and have two children.”
― Camille Pagán, I'm Fine and Neither Are You

“But in reality, it was not just that every year here felt like an erosion of the person I had been prior to having children—though there was certainly that. It was that I was not sure what all of those years represented. Was this it? Was this the goal, the reason, the sum total of two decades of adult decisions?”
― Camille Pagán, I'm Fine and Neither Are You