117 Quotes by Kelly Corrigan

But the truth is that I’m always teetering between a mature acceptance of life’s immutables and a childish railing against the very same.

Learn to say no. And when you do, don’t complain and don’t explain. Every excuse you make is like an invitation to ask you again in a different way.

To love someone is to love the people they love, or at least, try.

Why we don’t value intellectual honesty beyond easy answers is beyond me.

What is it about a living mother that makes her so hard to see, to feel, to want, to love, to like? What a colossal waste that we can only fully appreciate certain riches – clean clothes, hot showers, good health, mothers – in their absence.

Right then, as the first campers headed down the hill for morning cheers, twelve-year-old Lucy... said what I wish everyone would say – not “I’m sorry” but “I know.” Is there a broth more restoring than company?

The thing about mothers, I want to say, is that once the containment ends and one becomes two, you don’t always fit together so nicely... The living mother-daughter relationship, you learn over and over again, is a constant choice between adaptation and acceptance.

According to my mother, the cornerstone of a proper apology is taking responsibility, and the capstone is naming the transgression. Contrition must be felt and conveyed. Finally, apologies are better served plain, hold the rationalizations. In other words, I’m sorry should be followed by a pause or period, not by but and never by you.

The idea is that readers don’t come blank to books. Consciously and not, we bring all the biases that come with our nationality, gender, race, class, age. They you layer onto that the status of our health, employment, relationships, not to mention our particular relationship to each book – who gave it to us, where we read it, what books we’ve already read – and as my professor put it, ‘That massive array of spices has as much to do with the flavor of the soup as whatever the cook intended.