51 Quotes by Kathleen Rooney

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.

If one were HAPPY, then one might stay in with a book, say, and not go out hunting for fun.

If one knocks oneself out of one’s routine – and in so doing knocks others gently out of theirs – then one can now and again create these momentary opportunities to be better than one is.

We’ve been here all along, the world seemed to say, waiting for you. What took you so long to find us? I.

New things pop up at the edges, but the middle’s where the money is.

Even then I’d begun to think – and to push away the thought – that committing oneself to being fashionable was simultaneously committing oneself to being perishable.

I despise this ad, and the TV on which it plays with those flashing lights. I mourn the conversations murdered by their juvenile intrusions.

But there was no way to know, and no way to go back. I could not revise. I had been who I had been, and so I largely remained.

This, I am reminded, is why I love walking in the city, taking to the streets in pursuit of some spontaneous and near-arbitrary objectives. If one knocks oneself out of one’s routine- and in so doing knocks others gently out of theirs- then one can now and again create these momentary opportunities to be better than one is.