Safekeeping Quotes

“You had a certain way of saying my name. It was the inflection maybe, something you put into those three syllables. And now you are gone and my name is just my name again, not the story of my life.”
― Abigail Thomas, Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life

“She would (if she could) put her arm around the girl she'd been and try to tell her Take it easy, but the girl would not have listened. The girl had no receptors for Take it easy. And besides, "Hey Jude" was on the radio, it was her prayer, her manifesto, almost her dwelling place. She sang it everywhere. The music made her cry then; it makes her cry now. Listening to it now brings back memories so sharp they taste like blood in her mouth.”
― Abigail Thomas, Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life

“But she spent the next forty years with her eye on who was looking back. This didn't get in her way. It was her way. Her ambition was to be desired. Now this over and what a relief. Finally she can get some work don.”
― Abigail Thomas, Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life

“HUGS: She is amazed to find (after all these years) how simple it is. Nothing complicated is required of you. There are no special instructions. A hug is shelter, a dwelling place. It is dependable, durable, and easy to assemble with what you can find at the scene of the accident.”
― Abigail Thomas, Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life

“I don't mean to sound bitter. I'm not bitter. I a little bit amused, looking back, this view from the person I have finally become.”
― Abigail Thomas, Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life

“Shhh,” she wants to say to her husband as he speaks a pleasantry in her ear, “I am remembering being lonely.”
― Abigail Thomas, Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life

“She likes to think this is a real memory, but she doesn’t know that she isn’t making it up.”
― Abigail Thomas, Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life

“and you have to take gladly what life offers, she has learned that much, and sometimes you get lucky. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there? There’s nothing wrong with that.”
― Abigail Thomas, Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life

“You can appreciate things at four in the morning that would go right past you during the day.”
― Abigail Thomas, Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life

“She was tired of relationships whose greatest intimacy consisted of sitting up all night weeping while love died.”
― Abigail Thomas, Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life

“What is this longing, she will want to ask. This troubling feeling of more to come. You can make something out of it, I want to tell her. But that's what her life is for.”
― Abigail Thomas, Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life