I Thought You Said This Would Work Quotes

“When girls were friends, it was like a beautiful bouquet of funny flowers eternally watered by their togetherness.”
― Ann Wertz Garvin, I Thought You Said This Would Work

“He had judged the Holly situation and knew how to join in the fun like a girl on the playground jumping into a double Dutch competition.”
― Ann Wertz Garvin, I Thought You Said This Would Work

“We’re odd, we humans,” she would say. “We know people die, but we act astonished when it happens. What is astonishing about death is our certainty that it isn’t going to happen to us or anyone we know without some kind of warning. And, we live our life doing stupid things like gossiping, when we should spend all our days planting flowers.”
― Ann Wertz Garvin, I Thought You Said This Would Work

“This was the comfort of love. It didn’t cure cancer or reduce the pain of childbirth, but it cloaked lovers, friends, and family in an embrace that stretched far and wide and was supremely difficult to break, despite our best idiotic efforts.”
― Ann Garvin, I Thought You Said This Would Work

“Maybe it was part of that weird thing we humans do. We only want to be a member of the club that won’t have us. Maybe it was my almost-desperate need to be liked, and here this person was, wildly, aggressively not liking me. But when Holly was vulnerable and needed somebody, I just wanted to comfort her, and I wanted her friendship because despite everything, I still loved her.”
― Ann Garvin, I Thought You Said This Would Work

“Men typically did not notice me. I must emit the smell of meh and a second-favorite childhood shoe. I tried to wink back, managing only to squeeze both my eyes shut.”
― Ann Wertz Garvin, I Thought You Said This Would Work

“This was the comfort of love. It didn’t cure cancer or reduce the pain of childbirth, but it cloaked lovers, friends, and family in an embrace that stretched far and wide and was supremely difficult to break, despite our best idiotic efforts.”
― Ann Wertz Garvin, I Thought You Said This Would Work

“That was what true survival was, keeping the heart beating while continuing to feel everything.”
― Ann Wertz Garvin, I Thought You Said This Would Work

“At the very least, there should be a semblance of respect and predictability. You should know that you will be treated well, that you will get the same person every day with regard to personality, and for the most part mood, and you should never agree to walking on eggshells.”
― Ann Wertz Garvin, I Thought You Said This Would Work

“Cancer accepted no substitutes. That was why we all shuddered when the word was uttered. Cancer was synonymous with loss of control for everyone involved.”
― Ann Wertz Garvin, I Thought You Said This Would Work

“We were Bonnie and Bonnie, because nobody needed a Clyde when we were together.”
― Ann Wertz Garvin, I Thought You Said This Would Work

“I realized later that she was battling learned helplessness and depression that came from living with a mean control freak.”
― Ann Wertz Garvin, I Thought You Said This Would Work

“When you were a child and you were taught to avoid fighting at all costs, you never got to see the rewards of having the hard conversation. If this continued as you aged, you got the message that the spoils must be so terrible, so ungodly horrible, that nothing was worth an argument. When you were an adult, you could reason yourself out of that, see evidence everywhere that wasn’t true, but your child hid and whispered, But what if the result is worse than the fight?”
― Ann Wertz Garvin, I Thought You Said This Would Work

“Happiness is a place between too little and too much. —Finnish proverb”
― Ann Wertz Garvin, I Thought You Said This Would Work

“Holly wasn’t the only one whose mind worked in a flash when properly stimulated. The difference between the two of us wasn’t that I didn’t know what to say. The critical distinction was that Holly let herself say whatever popped into her head while I clamped my mouth shut. I knew that made me more likable than Holly in general. But after years of this practice, I felt like there might be a reservoir of unspoken retorts somewhere in my body, ready to burst. Perhaps sometime in the far future I’d go in to have brain surgery. The doctor would be concentrating and cut into a blob in my frontal lobe and a loud stream of saucy comebacks would scream from within. I pictured the doctor’s hair blowing back, which was silly; they always wore a cap.”
― Ann Garvin, I Thought You Said This Would Work

“Happiness is a place between too little and too much. —Finnish proverb”
― Ann Garvin, I Thought You Said This Would Work

“You’ve got a lot going on. You’re keeping track of your best friend, your daughter, and healing from the past. Also, this man you are texting.”
― Ann Garvin, I Thought You Said This Would Work

“Now, here we were on the road, and though I’d done everything right, my measured responses were doing little for me. I’d planted flowers. I’d not gossiped. I’d married after the first positive pregnancy test. Stayed in my lane. Kept quiet, safe. More raindrops fell on the windshield. Not Holly, though. She acted in whatever way she wanted. If her cells said, You love women, she went in that direction. If she wanted a child, she pursued it. Her fearlessness in college I’d found exhilarating. But now I snapped off the radio and settled into my outrage. The unfairness. How could recklessness be rewarded?”
― Ann Garvin, I Thought You Said This Would Work

“thanks is one. Also try, We’re different; Good to know; Hmmmm, I’ll think about that; and if they say something offensive, just say, Go Badgers and don’t”
― Ann Garvin, I Thought You Said This Would Work

“When you were a child and you were taught to avoid fighting at all costs, you never got to see the rewards of having the hard conversation. If this continued as you aged, you got the message that the spoils must be so terrible, so ungodly horrible, that nothing was worth an argument. When you were an adult, you could reason yourself out of that, see evidence everywhere that wasn’t true, but your child hid and whispered, But what if the result is worse than the fight?”
― Ann Garvin, I Thought You Said This Would Work

“In the quiet evening, though, I’d catch an old Meg Ryan or Julia Roberts rom-com on the television. And I can tell you this: no one in the world wants to be single during a rom-com. No one in the world says, Thank God nobody looks at me that way. Thank God nobody sprints through an airport and shouts “I love you” just before going through security.”
― Ann Garvin, I Thought You Said This Would Work

“apply.”
― Ann Garvin, I Thought You Said This Would Work

“There was no quid pro quo from kids. No How’s the trip going? Or, Are you having a good time? That’s not how the parenting contract went. For every ten times parents supported their child, their child might think to respond once in kind.”
― Ann Wertz Garvin, I Thought You Said This Would Work

“Not for the syndrome where you lose your cellular equivalent, the person who fed off your breast for a year, the one person you could always call your own, my daughter. Even if it was to finish the sentence with “My daughter is annoyed by me.”
― Ann Wertz Garvin, I Thought You Said This Would Work

“had turned into a divining rod for moods, quivering at the slightest change, shrinking from anything that wasn’t steady. Anything, even joy, had signaled something that could turn to discord.”
― Ann Wertz Garvin, I Thought You Said This Would Work

“Safety and the idea that you can keep anyone safe is an illusion. But, loving someone is the ultimate safekeeping.”
― Ann Wertz Garvin, I Thought You Said This Would Work

“She wrapped her long, slender arms around his neck like a high school girl at a nineties prom dancing to the theme from Titanic.”
― Ann Wertz Garvin, I Thought You Said This Would Work

“As I said, thanks is one. Also try, We’re different; Good to know; Hmmmm, I’ll think about that; and if they say something offensive, just say, Go Badgers and don’t follow up with anything”
― Ann Wertz Garvin, I Thought You Said This Would Work

“However large or small a group is, the addition of one person will forever change interactions, and preexisting ground rules no longer apply.”
― Ann Wertz Garvin, I Thought You Said This Would Work

“When things went wrong when you were single, you had no one to blame but yourself—which cut the accusations in half because no one was looking at you disapprovingly.”
― Ann Wertz Garvin, I Thought You Said This Would Work