52 Quotes by Abigail Thomas

It's easy now - it's middle-aged lady, nobody's looking, nobody notices. I go without lipstick if I feel like it, and I always wear my comfy clothes. It's a life with fewer distractions, but should something beautiful show up, a middle-aged woman is free to stare.

Shopping is hope.

Good things happen slowly and bad things happen fast. Those were comforting words, and they comfort me today.

Maybe there are clusters of souls born again and again into the same repertory company, and with each new birth they play different parts in a different play. Or maybe it’s the same play. This would account for those moments of Oh! there you are! After all, there are those people we like and dislike, there are those people we love, and then there are those we recognize. These are the unbreakable connections.

The process is a lot like writing. You start with a wisp of memory, or some detail that won’t let you be. You write, you cross out. You write again, revise, feel like giving up. What pulls you through? Curiosity.

It was a long time before I realized that you don’t have to start right, you just have to start. Put pen to paper, allow yourself the freedom to write badly, to get it wrong, stop looking over your own shoulder.

If you were to look into our apartment in the late morning, or early afternoon, or toward suppertime, you might find us together sleeping. Of course a good rainy day is preferable, but even on sunny summer days, the dogs and I get into bed.

Happy,” for instance, once meant “luck.” Not good luck or bad, just luck. Look what we have done to ourselves. We think we can actually pursue happiness.

A couple of years ago my sister Judy and I were each given a box of truffles. The tiny print said two pieces contained 310 calories and there were six pieces in each box. We were sitting on the bus headed downtown, quietly doing our calculations: Judy was dividing by two and I was multiplying by three. When she realized what I was doing, a look came over her face that is hard to describe. ‘I lost all hope for you’ she says now.