8 Quotes by Susie Orman Schnall

Her mother had always taught her to keep her expectations in check. That way she’d never be disappointed. Yes, Mother dear, Charlotte thought, but that way you can never dream.

Let her tell him how she felt and how she just couldn’t do it anymore. How she couldn’t enable her father, how she couldn’t rescue her mother, how she couldn’t keep putting herself last in a trio of dysfunction. How she realized that the only way to heal was to extricate herself entirely from the one relationship that was supposed to be the most pure and protective. But it wasn’t.

Thank you so much. That was so nice of you,” Olivia said, suddenly feeling both uncomfortable for intruding on some other family and close to tears with yearning, realizing how much she was missing in her life by not having dinners like this more often. Or ever.

All that remained were memories that clouded her thoughts like black smoke from a fire, aches buried so deeply within Olivia’s soul that it felt like they would never go away.

Time has a really incredible way of dulling feelings that you think will be sharp for your entire life. One day you wake up, and sometimes it takes something like this for that to happen, but you realize that the point isn't so pointy. And the edge isn't so jagged. And you find in your heart a way to accept people for who they are, because it's not always entirely their fault.

Chance encounters - seeming coincidences of place and time - were fickle. Sometimes such encounters embodied a chemistry and mind of their own, resulting in relationships the were momentous. And sometimes those encounters had as much energy as a speck of inconsequential dust, meant to be overlooked and immediately forgotten.

I never wanted to be a mother,” Rose said wistfully. “I thought that because I had a terrible mother, I would be a terrible mother.”“That’s how I feel,” Olivia said.“Don’t make the same decision I made. I actually think the opposite can be true, meaning that if you had a terrible mother, you are that much more conscious of being a wonderful mother yourself.

But it was time for Monday morning. The great arbiter of fresh starts and calendars stretching for days on end. Office workers in Park Avenue corner offices and pattern makers in Garment District walk-ups were drunk with the possibility of a whole week set before them like a new school year to a class full of wide-eyed kindergarteners. The idea that there was so much time to make things happen.