51 Quotes by Kathleen Rooney

I thought at times that poetry might be an elegant way of screaming.

Like many parents in middle age, he's quick to spot changes in the world, slow to note shifts in his own perspective.

I spent my first Christmas in the city alone. Alone, but not lonely; in the state of being solitary but not the condition of wishing myself otherwise. Solitude enrobed me like a long, warm coat.

For though I was raised Protestant, my true religion is actually civility. Please note that I do not call my faith “politeness.” That’s part of it, yes, but I say civility because I believe that good manners are essential to the preservation of humanity— one’s own and others’— but only to the extent that that civility is honest and reasonable, not merely the mindless handmaiden of propriety.

I wasn't glad that I hadn't died. And I wasn't sad that I hadn't. I wasn't anything.

How am I still making stupid mistakes in my eighties? Whenever somebody says to me, "Maybe it'll come with age," I want to say, 'I wouldn't count on it.

Choice is an illusion promoted by the powerful.

Time only goes in that one direction.

All right, all right," he said, with that gesture I'd come to hate: two open palms facing me and patting the air, as if pushing me away, pushing me down, pushing any tears I might be preparing to cry back into their ducts.