Early Morning Riser Quotes

“Oh, the joy of a shared life! The joy is not - as many people believe - building a future with someone, or opening your heart to another human being, or even the ability to gift each other money with limited tax consequences. The joy is in the dailiness. The joy is having someone who will stop you from hitting the snooze button on the alarm endlessly. The joy is in the smell of someone else's cooking. The joy is knowing that you can call someone and ask him to pick up a gallon of milk on his way over. The joy is having someone to watch "Kitchen Nightmares" with, because it is really no good when you watch it by yourself. The joy is hoping (however unrealistically) that someone else will unload the dishwasher. The joy is having someone listen to the weird cough your car has developed and reassure you that it doesn't sound expensive. The joy is saying how much you want a glass of wine and having someone tell you, "Go ahead, you deserve it!" (Although it's possible to achieve the last one with a pet and a little imagination.)”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

“The worst part was that she’d given it to him. Yes, that was always the worst part. You gave it to him. You carved out a crucial little part of yourself, and you not only gave it to him, you begged him to take it. You pushed it on him, the way you might press food on a hungry traveler or money on a less fortunate relative. You were sure at that moment that you would always have an endless supply, or at least more than enough, because you were one of the lucky ones. So you gave it to him. You did”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

“Sometimes she though being with her mother was like crossing a desert: long, hard stretches of burning sand that exhausted you, but every once in a while, you happened on a little oasis of kindness.”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

“Does Gary have to come too?"
"You know as well as I do that Gary doesn't like to be alone after dark," Duncan said. "He says the toilet whispers.”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

“Rory was a pale, thin boy with no-color hair and eyes as dark and troubled as shadows. He seemed to have a great difficulty finding the bathroom, even though Jane had kept him after school to practice the route.
"See?" she'd said. "Just come out of the classroom and turn left and walk down this hall and turn right."
"That's what I do," Rory said. "And sometimes the bathroom's there, and sometimes it's not."
"It's always there," Jane said gently. Did he think it was the Brigadoon of bathrooms? "Maybe sometimes you take a wrong turn. Let's practice again."
"That's okay," Rory assured her. "If it's there, I go. If it's not, I hold it.”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

“She felt a sort of cellular-level sorrow and wondered if she loved more deeply than other people. Or was everyone else just more mature, more rational? More realistic? Maybe everyone else was right, and Jane was wrong.”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

“Good as new? Was Duncan crazy? Jimmy would never be new, never be the same. How could Duncan not realize that every time you fell in love and it didn’t work out, it scraped out a little piece of you, like scooping out a piece of cantaloupe with a melon baller, and there were only so many times that could happen before the scoop marks started to show? That in really no time at all, your heart could become a cold, pockmarked stone?”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

“Aggie taught Jane to make Moroccan lamb meatballs and said bad things about people who used died ginger and that sangria was really a lower class sort of drink, and it was just like old times. Well, almost like old times, except that now Jane was the one that Aggie contacted, not Duncan. Jane was the one she texted when she had surplus tomatoes or homemade jam. Jane was the one Aggie asked for help when her washing machine went berserk and shimmied its way half out of her laundry room, although in that case all Jane did was dispatch Duncan. Jane was the one Aggie asked for advice on her bathroom tiles and then rejected the color Jane chose. "She does that", Duncan said. "She asks you your opinion when she already has her mind made up. Drives me crazy. Jane was the one Aggie called when Gary began having dizzy spells and blurred vision, and Aggie thought he might be having a stroke. Although it turned out that he was just wearing the wrong eyeglasses having accidentally picked up someone else's at the office.”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

“It was enough just to sit with him on the porch, looking at the dew sparkling on the grass and the sun shooting biblical-looking rays of light through the pine trees. She should sit out here more often early in the morning. She and Duncan could have coffee here, start their day with calm and beauty. But she knew it was one of those things—like Sunday afternoon drives and mother-daughter yoga class and vacuuming the refrigerator coils—that she would think about but never actually do again, and that made it all the sweeter.”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

“She should sit out here more often early in the morning. She and Duncan could have coffee here, start their day with calm and beauty. But she knew it was one of those things—like Sunday afternoon drives and mother-daughter yoga class and vacuuming the refrigerator coils—that she would think about but never actually do again, and that made it all the sweeter. — It was not for nothing that Jane taught second grade.”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

“You said back then that you were sorry you’d ever met him and that you’d never forgive him for introducing us.” “I know,” Aggie said. “But I thought he would always be there, waiting to be forgiven.”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

“All parents want to hear good things about their children, but sometimes you had to say bad things. If you said the bad things to subtly, the parents didn't believe you. If you said the bad things too baldly, the parents got upset. Actually, they often didn't believe you anyway and then they got upset, too. It was like having an intervention for an alcoholic every twenty minutes for an entire working day.”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

“Summer finally came, all at once. Grass turned green, flowers burst into bloom, birds were everywhere, and temperatures zoomed up into the eighties, as though the weather wanted to catch people unawares and make them complain about the heat.”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

“Last year, one of the third-grade teachers had returned to school following her maternity leave and quit for good a month later. “It turns out I can be nice at work or nice at home,” the teacher told Jane. “Not both.”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

“All parents want to hear good things about their children, but sometimes you had to say bad things. If you said the bad things too subtly, the parents didn’t believe you. If you said the bad things too baldly, the parents got upset. Actually, they often didn’t believe you anyway and then they got upset, too.”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

“Jane thought that perhaps because Freida had been unmarried for so long, her honeymoon stage was lasting longer, too. It could mean a rough decade ahead.”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

“But this time around, Jane was determined to do everything right. She wouldn’t be jealous, not of Aggie, not of Duncan’s legion of ex-girlfriends, not of the new waitress at Robert’s with the long, dark eyelashes, not of the girl at the video store who carried her breasts in front of her as though they were a couple of large cupcakes. She would not be demanding, not of Duncan’s time, not of his attention, not of his commitment, not of his money. (He didn’t have any, so that part would be easy.) She would be all the things she had always meant to be in their relationship and somehow never managed to be: wise and cool and levelheaded and regal and hopelessly alluring, like a single ball bearing gleaming on a black velvet background, or maybe a Swedish nanny. If that meant inviting Aggie and Gary to Taco Tuesday, so be it.”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

“Rae Lynn was a Gemini. And a night person. Her favorite drink was a strawberry margaritas and her favorite perfume was straight vanilla extract... Her favorite movie star used to be Mel Gibson, but now that he'd had such an obvious mid-life crisis, it was Matthew McConaughey and she felt too much loyalty to ER to even start on Grey's Anatomy. If she were a Crayola Crayon, she's be bluebell. And if she was a kind of weather, she's be the rain when it spits. She couldn't even remember her natural hair color, and she twirled spaghetti, not cut it. And if she knew the world was ending tomorrow she'd go out and eat a whole pecan pie and not care if it gave her a migraine.
Jane didn't know if Rae Lynn preferred her men shy and inexperienced, but she hoped so.
They all hoped so. If only Rae Lynn could see past Jimmy's deficits to the deeply kind and honorable man who dwelt inside.”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

“Remember when the Kerns put striped carpeting on their stairs and kept falling down them because they could tell where the edges were?"
Aggie laughed.
And glancing up Jane saw her shake her head just slightly and nearly imperceptible hug.
Apparently Aggie had decided, as so many women had before her, that being angry with Duncan was just not worth the effort.”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

“Jimmy gave a startled yelp. She had put cute little candy cane striped glass cocktail stirrers in everyone's drinks and Jimmy had thought they were real candy canes and bitten his in half. "Goodness. I feel dreadful", Jane said to everyone while Jimmy was in the bathroom, spitting out blood and shards of glass. "Should we take him to the ER?" "Oh, he'll be fine," Duncan assured her. "He didn't go to the ER that time he accidentally locked himself into the finishing room and inhaled fumes all night."
That didn't seem like the soundest piece of logic to Jane, but Jimmy came back into the room at that moment and said, "I'm OK, really Jane. I'll just keep this napkin in there to stop the bleeding." So Jimmy spent spent the rest of the evening with a white cloth napkin poking out of his mouth and looked vaguely like a trout.”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

“Another woman was accompanied by a man with the most unfortunate facial hair Jane had ever seen—a moustache no thicker than dental floss that started under his nose and continued down either side of his mouth to meet on his chin. It looked like someone had circled an area on his face with a marker and said, 'This here is where your moustache and beard should go.”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

“All parents want to hear good things about their children, but sometimes you had to say bad things. If you said the bad things too subtly, the parents didn’t believe you. If you said the bad things too baldly, the parents got upset. Actually, they often didn’t believe you anyway and then they got upset, too. It was like having an intervention for an alcoholic every twenty minutes for an entire working day.”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

“How could Duncan not realize that every time you fell in love and it didn’t work out, it scraped out a little piece of you, like scooping out a piece of cantaloupe with a melon baller, and there were only so many times that could happen before the scoop marks started to show? That in really no time at all, your heart could become a cold, pockmarked stone?”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

“Oh, the joy of a shared life! The joy is not—as many people believe—building a future with someone, or opening your heart to another human being, or even the ability to gift each other money with limited tax consequences. The joy is in the dailiness.”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

“This was not the night Jane got drunk enough to ask Freida if it was true she hadn’t ever had sex with anyone, not even a drunk migrant worker, but Jane felt strongly that such a night was in her future. It was as inevitable as sunrise.”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser