Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting Quotes

“They want us to be small, so we have to stand tall. They want us to be invisible, so we have to be seen. They want us to be quiet, so we have to be heard. They want us to surrender, so we have to fight.”
― Clare Pooley, The People on Platform 5

“No woman is anyone’s “other half”. We are all entire people. Completely whole, and totally unique. But sometimes when you put two very different whole people together, a kind of magic, an alchemy, occurs.”
― Clare Pooley, The People on Platform 5

“It makes me furious that as men age, they gain gravitas. They become “silver foxes.” Women, however, become invisible. We cannot allow this to happen, my friends. We must all be more Iona. We all deserve, like Iona, to have a Triumphant Second Act.”
― Clare Pooley, Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting

“The only way to be guaranteed of failure, dear boy, is not to try,’ said Iona. ‘Love is the greatest risk of all, but a life without it is meaningless.”
― Clare Pooley, The People on Platform 5

“most endings turned out to be beginnings in disguise.”
― Clare Pooley, The People on Platform 5

“the best way to persuade someone to talk is to stay quiet. People, when confronted with silence, feel the overwhelming urge to fill it with something.”
― Clare Pooley, The People on Platform 5

“she just wanted to sit quietly and imagine herself in a world where she still mattered.”
― Clare Pooley, Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting

“Darling, what is the point of being alive if you go through life unnoticed, without standing out and making waves?”
― Clare Pooley, The People on Platform 5

“But sometimes when you put two very different people together, a kind of magic, an alchemy, occurs. Bea said I was like eggs and sugar, and she was flour and butter, and when you mixed us together, we were more than just the combination of our ingredients, we were the whole damn cake.”
― Clare Pooley, Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting

“Your anxiety is the other side of the coin of your empathy.”
― Clare Pooley, Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting

“She feels most comfortable in the past, so we spend a lot of our time there now.”
― Clare Pooley, The People on Platform 5

“Your past experiences, she’d explained, are the foundations on which you build your future. Build them on pride, not shame. Denying your history leaves your house standing on sand, always in danger of collapsing.”
― Clare Pooley, Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting

“If you’re going to get it wrong, Martha, make sure you get it wrong with PANACHE! Surely they’ll give you a mark for style, at least?”
― Clare Pooley, Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting

“The only way to be guaranteed of failure, dear boy, is not to try,” said Iona. “Love is the greatest risk of all, but a life without it is meaningless.”
― Clare Pooley, Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting

“Sometimes fate just shows you the way to go and”
― Clare Pooley, Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting

“Trains are wonderful. To travel by train is to see nature and human beings, towns and churches and rivers, in fact, to see life. AGATHA CHRISTIE”
― Clare Pooley, Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting

“She loved being able to touch these photos, rather than having them floating around in the cloud, mingling with millions of other memories exiled by thousands of strangers. All those holidays, weddings, and birthday parties jumbled up together in the ether, just waiting to be called down for their moment in the sun, or thrown up as a random Facebook memory.”
― Clare Pooley, Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting

“Wasn’t she? “No woman is anyone’s ‘other half.’ We are all entire people. Completely whole, and totally unique. But sometimes when you put two very different whole people together, a kind of magic, an alchemy, occurs. Bea said I was like eggs and sugar, and she was flour and butter, and when you mixed us together, we were more than just the combination of our ingredients, we were the whole damn cake.”
― Clare Pooley, Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting

“If you give up, they win, darling,” she’d said. “They want us to be small, so we have to stand tall. They want us to be invisible, so we have to be seen. They want us to be quiet, so we have to be heard. They want us to surrender, so we have to fight.”
― Clare Pooley, Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting

“they didn’t want to be her friends, just her protectors, and their suffocating concern only made her feel weaker and more pathetic. More of a target.”
― Clare Pooley, Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting

“She’d noticed him because of his exquisite tailoring, which ordinarily she would have admired, but it was rather ruined by an extraordinary sense of entitlement that only really comes with being white, male, heterosexual, and excessively solvent. This was evidenced by his penchant for manspreading, and talking extremely loudly on his mobile phone about the markets and positions. She’d once heard him refer to his wife as the ball and chain.”
― Clare Pooley, Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting

“Darling, she’s a dog, not a child, she’d said on numerous occasions. Iona was quite aware of that. Children these days were rather selfish, lazy, and entitled, she thought.”
― Clare Pooley, Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting

“Why had it taken her so long to see her train carriage as a fascinating portal into other people's stories, rather than just a way of getting from A to B?”
― Clare Pooley, Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting

“You know, there’s a fabulous Buddhist saying that goes: When the pupil is ready, the teacher appears . . . ,” said Iona, with a loaded emphasis on teacher.”
― Clare Pooley, Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting

“They’d been so broke after buying the house, and Iona couldn’t believe her luck when someone offered to pay her to go to parties and then gossip about them, which was how she spent all her time anyway.”
― Clare Pooley, Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting

“Iona found herself at a loss as to the required etiquette. Her recent exchanges with Piers had served only as salutary reminders that engaging with strangers on the train was not a good idea at all. That’s why there was an unwritten law against it. But she and Sanjay had shared a moment. They were joined together, like it or not, by a brush with death. So, what were the rules now? God, it was difficult being British sometimes”
― Clare Pooley, Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting

“Her latest editor had scheduled a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree appraisal, which sounded altogether too intimate. At her age (fifty-seven), one didn’t like to be appraised too closely, and certainly not from every angle.”
― Clare Pooley, Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting

“He’d tried to cajole her out of her office space with sweet talk of an extra hour in bed and more flexibility, and, when that didn’t work, had attempted to drive her out by making her do something awful called hot desking, which—she learned—was corporate speak for sharing”
― Clare Pooley, Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting

“The magic of acting is it takes you out of yourself. It allows you to try on other people’s clothes and inhabit different worlds. It’s the perfect therapy when real life is too hard.”
― Clare Pooley, Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting

“refuse to waste a single day more stressing about something I can’t control.”
― Clare Pooley, The People on Platform 5