Clare Pooley > Quotes

“The truth often isn't pretty. It's not aspirational. It doesn't fit neatly into a little square on Instagram.”
― Clare Pooley, The Authenticity Project

“They want us to be small, so we have to stand tall. They want us to be invisible, so we have to be seen. They want us to be quiet, so we have to be heard. They want us to surrender, so we have to fight.”
― Clare Pooley, The People on Platform 5

“No woman is anyone’s “other half”. We are all entire people. Completely whole, and totally unique. But sometimes when you put two very different whole people together, a kind of magic, an alchemy, occurs.”
― Clare Pooley, The People on Platform 5

“in a world where you can be anything, be kind.”
― Clare Pooley, The Authenticity Project

“Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack in everything That’s how the light gets in. —LEONARD COHEN”
― Clare Pooley, The Authenticity Project

“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift,” she’d chant to herself as she brushed her teeth. “It’s not happy people who are grateful, it’s grateful people who are happy,” she’d say as she brushed her hair.”
― Clare Pooley, The Authenticity Project

“Meet force with softness. Recipe for life. Now you understand.’ And, strangely, he did.”
― Clare Pooley, The Authenticity Project

“most endings turned out to be beginnings in disguise.”
― Clare Pooley, The People on Platform 5

“It makes me furious that as men age, they gain gravitas. They become “silver foxes.” Women, however, become invisible. We cannot allow this to happen, my friends. We must all be more Iona. We all deserve, like Iona, to have a Triumphant Second Act.”
― Clare Pooley, Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting

“The only way to be guaranteed of failure, dear boy, is not to try,’ said Iona. ‘Love is the greatest risk of all, but a life without it is meaningless.”
― Clare Pooley, The People on Platform 5

“Mother is a verb, not a noun.”
― Clare Pooley, The Authenticity Project

“the best way to persuade someone to talk is to stay quiet. People, when confronted with silence, feel the overwhelming urge to fill it with something.”
― Clare Pooley, The People on Platform 5

“she just wanted to sit quietly and imagine herself in a world where she still mattered.”
― Clare Pooley, Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting

“You have such energy. You're like the sun. When you're interested in someone, you turn your rays towards them and they luxuriate in your warmth. But then you turn somewhere else, leaving them in the shadow, and they spend all their energy trying to recreate the memory of your light.”
― Clare Pooley, The Authenticity Project

“But sometimes when you put two very different people together, a kind of magic, an alchemy, occurs. Bea said I was like eggs and sugar, and she was flour and butter, and when you mixed us together, we were more than just the combination of our ingredients, we were the whole damn cake.”
― Clare Pooley, Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting

“Then he’d discovered that routines were crucial. They created buoys he could cling to to keep himself afloat.”
― Clare Pooley, The Authenticity Project

“When we first come here in 1973, two men came to restaurant and say, ‘Go back to China and take your filthy, foreign food with you.’ I say, ‘You are angry. Anger comes from stomach. Sit. I bring you soup. For free. It will make you feel better.’ They ate my wonton soup. Recipe from my grandmother. They have been customers of restaurant for forty years. Meet force with softness. Recipe for life. Now you understand.” And, strangely, he did.”
― Clare Pooley, The Authenticity Project

“Preparation is the key to effective spontaneity.”
― Clare Pooley, The Authenticity Project

“Darling, what is the point of being alive if you go through life unnoticed, without standing out and making waves?”
― Clare Pooley, The People on Platform 5

“Your anxiety is the other side of the coin of your empathy.”
― Clare Pooley, Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting

“Monica, why does everything have to have a point? Why does it all have to be part of a plan? Sometimes it's best to let things just grow naturally, like wildflowers.”
― Clare Pooley, The Authenticity Project

“Perhaps the compulsion to fill every inch of space was because it made him feel less alone,”
― Clare Pooley, The Authenticity Project

“She appeared to have jumped out of the frying pan of sexism and into the fire of ageism. The final frontier of isms.”
― Clare Pooley, How to Age Disgracefully

“After I left, I learned to be my own sun.”
― Clare Pooley, The Authenticity Project

“The strange thing about reaching your fifties is that, although your outsides might be gradually falling apart, on the inside you don’t feel any different from the way you did in your twenties.”
― Clare Pooley, How to Age Disgracefully

“Tai chi is about the balance of yin and yang. If you use hardness to resist force, then both sides will break. Tai chi meets hardness with softness, so incoming force exhausts itself. It is philosophy for life also. You understand?”
― Clare Pooley, The Authenticity Project

“She feels most comfortable in the past, so we spend a lot of our time there now.”
― Clare Pooley, The People on Platform 5

“Besides,’ continued Julian, ‘you can slam down a phone like that. You can’t slam down a mobile. Imagine, a whole generation who’ll never know the joy of slamming down a phone.”
― Clare Pooley, The Authenticity Project

“How well do you know the people who live near you? How well do they know you? Do you even know the names of your neighbors? Would you realize if they were in trouble, or hadn’t left their house for days? Some people withhold the truth about their lives. What would happen if you shared the truth about you? The one thing that defines you, that makes everything else about you fall into place? Would you be willing to share openly with those real people around you? Maybe telling that story would change your life, or the life of someone you’ve not yet met. That’s what I want to find out.”
― Clare Pooley, The Authenticity Project

“He had the rather uncomfortable feeling that he only really existed in the eye of the beholder, that when he stopped being noticed, he actually stopped being. Did that make him horribly shallow? And if so, did it matter?”
― Clare Pooley, The Authenticity Project