21 Quotes by Glynnis MacNicol

He cleared his throat. "Can I ask you, what does a woman mean when she says she needs space?" He put his hand to his chest. "I have lost my wife, she has left, and it hurts so deeply."I stifled a laugh, not because I thought he pain (or inebriation, if that's what it was) was funny, but because it was too ridiculous. After all this, to be happily sitting alone on a beach on my fortieth birthday and be called upon by a male stranger to answer for his aloneness.

This is why people have babies...because it's exhausting not to know what you're supposed to do next. A baby is basically a nonnegotiable map for the next two decades.

And I knew the simple act of reading would give my mind a certain sort of peace nothing else could.

We're always drawn to the clearest articulation of what we think we lack.

We're the first generation that can make enough of our own money to live the way we want. I feel like we have a responsibility to figure out what this means.

I have never been more relieved than on the morning of my fortieth birthday...it felt like I'd been released.

The solution to all my problems remained the same: I just needed to keep moving.

But it seemed to me that going through life making decisions on what I might possibly feel in a future that may or may not come about was a bad way to live.

Men, it occurred to me, perhaps for the first time in my life, did not need to be a goal.