Abigail Thomas > Quotes

“There are those people who can eat one piece of chocolate, one piece of cake, drink one glass of wine. There are even people who smoke one or two cigarettes a week. And then there are people for whom one of anything is not even an option.”
― Abigail Thomas, Thinking About Memoir

“Dogs are never in a bad mood over something you said at breakfast. Dogs never sniff at the husks of old conversations, or conduct autopsies on weekends gone wrong. An unexamined life may not be worth living, but the overexamined life is hell. We talk too much.”
― Abigail Thomas, A Three Dog Life

“It's easy now - it's middle-aged lady, nobody's looking, nobody notices. I go without lipstick if I feel like it, and I always wear my comfy clothes. It's a life with fewer distractions, but should something beautiful show up, a middle-aged woman is free to stare.”
― Abigail Thomas, A Three Dog Life

“There is nothing like calamity for refreshing the moment. Ironically, the last several years my life had begun to feel shapeless, like underwear with the elastic gone, the days down around my ankles.”
― Abigail Thomas, A Three Dog Life

“Grief is not a pleasure, but it makes me remember, and I am grateful.”
― Abigail Thomas, What Comes Next and How to Like It

“He remembers what I forget and I remember what he forgets. It's too late for either of us to make another old friend.”
― Abigail Thomas, What Comes Next and How to Like It

“The past is in the wastebasket.”
― Abigail Thomas, A Three Dog Life

“For better or for worse, but not for lunch,...”
― Abigail Thomas, A Three Dog Life

“Is memory property? If two people remember something differently is one of them wrong?”
― Abigail Thomas

“Well now I know I can control my tongue, my temper & my appetites, but that's it. I have no effect on weather, traffic or luck. I can't make good things happen; I can't keep anybody safe; I can't influence the future & I can't fix up the past. What a relief!"
from book A Three Dog Life by Abigail Thomas”
― Abigail Thomas

“Suffering is the finest teacher", said an old friend long ago. "It teaches you details.”
― Abigail Thomas

“A couple of years ago my sister Judy and I were each given a box of truffles. The tiny print said two pieces contained 310 calories and there were six pieces in each box. We were sitting on the bus headed downtown, quietly doing our calculations: Judy was dividing by two and I was multiplying by three. When she realized what I was doing, a look came over her face that is hard to describe. 'I lost all hope for you' she says now.”
― Abigail Thomas, Thinking About Memoir

“You had a certain way of saying my name. It was the inflection maybe, something you put into those three syllables. And now you are gone and my name is just my name again, not the story of my life.”
― Abigail Thomas, Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life

“Shopping is hope.”
― Abigail Thomas, A Three Dog Life

“Nothing is wasted when you are a writer. The stuff that doesn’t work has to be written to make way for the stuff that might;”
― Abigail Thomas, What Comes Next and How to Like It

“Here’s what I love about dogs. They aren’t careful not to disturb you. They don’t overthink. They jump on the bed or the sofa or the chair and plop down. They come and they go. I’m not sure they love me exactly, but they count on me because I am a source of heat and food and pleasure and affection.”
― Abigail Thomas, What Comes Next and How to Like It

“Napping is divine, but I no longer have all the time in the world.”
― Abigail Thomas, What Comes Next and How to Like It

“But when it gets dark, I’m off the hook. The day is officially rolled up and put away. I’m free to watch movies or stare at the wall, no longer holding myself accountable for what I might or might not have gotten done because the time for getting something done is over until tomorrow.”
― Abigail Thomas, What Comes Next and How to Like It

“...but they were writers and writers suggest things just to see what happens next.”
― Abigail Thomas

“I WAS ON A SMALL ISLAND ONCE, IN THE MIDDLE OF a great big lake, mountains all over the place, and as I watched the floating dock the wind kicked up, the waves rose from nowhere, and I imagined myself lying there and the dock suddenly breaking loose, carried away by the storm. I wondered if I could lie still and enjoy the sensation of rocking, after all I wouldn’t be dead yet, I wouldn’t be drowning, just carried off somewhere that wasn’t part of my plan. The very thought of it gave me the shivers. Still, how great to be enjoying the ride, however uncertain the outcome. I’d like that. It’s what we’re all doing anyway, we just don’t know it.”
― Abigail Thomas, A Three Dog Life

“What I used to fear was growing old—not the aches and pains part or the what-have-I-done-with-my-life part or the threat of illness, none of that. I just couldn’t imagine what my life would be like without the option of looking good. I had a piece of good luck. I married Rich in my late forties and thus was eased into middle age while living with a man who approved of the way I looked. When after three years of marriage I lamented the fact that I had put on a good deal of weight, he said, “Don’t worry. I love it all. You can get as fat as you want.” Then, upon reflection, he added sweetly, “As long as you can still get up from your chair.”
― Abigail Thomas, A Three Dog Life

“SIX MONTHS AGO A FRIEND WAS ANGRY WITH ME and I with her. I had written about something someone said many years ago, but it was she who heard the words, not me, a fact I had completely forgotten. Her experience was precious, and she accused me of stealing her memory. Not only that, but what she remembered with grief I had somehow transmuted to gratitude, so besides stealing her memory, I also got it wrong. We argued, but there was no meeting place. For days the same questions went through my head. Is memory property? If two people remember something differently is one of them wrong? Wasn’t my memory of a memory also real? There were no solid answers, just winding paths I went round and round on. I thought of nothing else; a chasm had opened between me and my friend.”
― Abigail Thomas, A Three Dog Life: A Memoir

“It ended sadly. The kind of ending where you wait together, holding hands and weeping, while off in another room, love slowly dies.”
― Abigail Thomas, What Comes Next and How to Like It

“There’s nothing I want to relive—certainly not youth—and as for what’s to come, I’m in no hurry. I watch my dogs. They throw themselves into everything they do; even their sleeping is wholehearted. They aren’t waiting for a better tomorrow, or looking back at their glory days. Following their example, I’m trying to stick to the present. I’m not stranded here, I know where I’ve been; I can conjure up details of old haunts, even former states of mind.”
― Abigail Thomas, A Three Dog Life: A Memoir

“She would (if she could) put her arm around the girl she'd been and try to tell her Take it easy, but the girl would not have listened. The girl had no receptors for Take it easy. And besides, "Hey Jude" was on the radio, it was her prayer, her manifesto, almost her dwelling place. She sang it everywhere. The music made her cry then; it makes her cry now. Listening to it now brings back memories so sharp they taste like blood in her mouth.”
― Abigail Thomas, Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life

“Forget career, forget the future, forget existential worries, just get yourselves a couple of dogs, and everything will be all right.”
― Abigail Thomas, What Comes Next and How to Like It

“Anger is a luxury. Anger wants answers, retribution, reason, something that makes sense. Anger wants a story, stories help us make sense out of everything. But while we scramble to help those who need it, who has time for anger? Who has time to make sense out of anything? There is only what is. Anger is a distraction. Anger removes me from grief, and the opportunity to be helpful.”
― Abigail Thomas, What Comes Next and How to Like It

“This would account for those moments of Oh! there you are! After all, there are those people we like and dislike, there are those people we love, and then there are those we recognize. These are the unbreakable connections.”
― Abigail Thomas, What Comes Next and How to Like It

“What can come? This was a brilliant question. Can is scarier than will. What will come limits itself. What can come has no boundaries.”
― Abigail Thomas, What Comes Next and How to Like It

“THE MOST IMPORTANT THING WRITING has taught me is this: the more vulnerable you allow yourself to be, the stronger you become.”
― Abigail Thomas, Still Life at Eighty: The Next Interesting Thing