Amy Krouse Rosenthal > Quotes

“cozy+smell of pancakes-alarm clock=weekend”
― Amy Krouse Rosenthal, This Plus That: Life's Little Equations – A Warm and Delightful Picture Book About Creative Parts for Children

“Just look at us, all of us, quietly doing our thing and trying to matter. The earnestness is inspiring and heartbreaking at the same time.”
― Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal: Not Exactly a Memoir

“I am a slow reader, and fast eater; I wish it were the other way around.”
― Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life

“When I am feeling dreary, annoyed and generally unimpressed by life, I imagine what it would be like to come back to this world for just a day after having been dead. I imagine how sentimental I would feel about the very things I once found stupid, hateful or mundane. Oh, there’s a light switch! I haven’t seen a light switch in so long! I didn’t realize how much I missed light switches! Oh! Oh! And look – the stairs up to our front porch are still completely cracked! Hello cracks! Let me get a good look at you. And there’s my neighbor, standing there, fantastically alive, just the same, still punctuating her sentences with you know what I’m saying? Why did that bother me? It’s so… endearing.”
― Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life

“To get a true sense of the book, I have to spend a few moments inside. I'll glance at the first couple pages, then flip around to somewhere in the middle, see if the language matches me somehow. It's like dating, only with sentences......It could be something as simple yet weirdly potent as a single word (tangerine). We're meant to be, that sentence and me. And when it happens, you just know.”
― Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life

“It often feels like I'm not so much living for the present as I am busy making memories for the future.”
― Amy Krouse Rosenthal, The Book of Eleven: An Itemized Collection of Brain Lint

“If you want to grow up to be a big, strong pea, you have to eat your candy," Papa Pea would say.”
― Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Little Pea

“In most cases, it is more satisfying to get a friend's answering machine and leave a cheery, tangible trace of your sincere commitment to the friendship than it is to engage in actual conversation.”
― Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life

“My brother, who grew up with three sisters, was I won't say how many years old when he finally realized that he did not have to wrap the towel around his chest when he came out of the shower.”
― Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life

“I have not survived against all odds. I have not lived to tell. I have not witnessed the extraordinary. This is my story.”
― Amy Krouse Rosenthal

“On the occasions where we do have to participate, to do more than nothing, it is desirable to have a glass of wine to soften all the everything.”
― Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life

“If you really love someone, you want to know what they ate for lunch or dinner without you.”
― Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life

“A good soup attracts chairs. This is an African proverb. I can hear the shuffling and squeaking on the wood floor, the gathering 'round. This, from just five well-chosen words.”
― Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life

“Every day is the prime of your life.”
― Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal: Not Exactly a Memoir

“It takes a snowflake two hours to fall from cloud to earth. Can’t you just see its slow, peaceful decent?”
― Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal: Not Exactly a Memoir

“ADMIRE means, I really look up to you and the way you are with your cookies. You remind me of what is good and possible in this world.”
― Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Sugar Cookies: A Loving Picture Book About Learning Words of Love for Kids

“A friend sat next to a nun on a plane. He asked her what she missed most. "Wearing blue jeans," she replied.”
― Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life

“It would be difficult to convince me that leaning has no effect whatsoever on the outcome of my bowling.”
― Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life

“A rainy day comes as a relief. Rain is your pass to stay inside, to retreat. It's cozy and safe, hanging out on this side of the gray. But then the sun comes out in the afternoon, and there's disappointment, even fear, because the world will now resume, and it expects your participation. People will get dressed and leave their houses and go places and do things. Stepping out into the big, whirling, jarringly sunny world--a world that just a few minutes ago was so confined and still and soft and understated, and refreshingly gloomy--seems overwhelming.”
― Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life

“Peace means no one is worried about anyone else's cookie...in this moment we are all quietly content with the cookies we have.”
― Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Christmas Cookies: Bite-Size Holiday Lessons

“Nothing > Love.”
― Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal: Not Exactly a Memoir

“For anyone trying to discern what to do with their life: PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT YOU PAY ATTENTION TO. That’s pretty much all the info you need.”
― Amy Krouse Rosenthal

“For some reason, it takes my brain a moment to process…the open-close symbols on elevators, which is which.”
― Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal: Not Exactly a Memoir

“I just learned the German word fernweh, sort of a cousin to wanderlust; it means “far-sickness, an ache for distance.” Penny”
― Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal

“Then again, Einstein (pretty good at math) was also quite clear when he concluded, There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
― Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal: Not Exactly a Memoir

“Work must reflect the randomness of life, with its incessant, merciless, almost humorous bombardment of highly contrasting emotions and experiences.”
― Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life

“I think 90 percent of what/who we are is never really verbally communicated....”
― Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life

“10. About these coincidences, the data and mathematicians are clear: Such things happen all the time. Then again, Einstein (pretty good at math) was also quite clear when he concluded, There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. 11. I’m going with B, everything.”
― Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal

“Who am I? Oh, yes: I'm the kind of person who doesn't like fiction, country music, or cilantro. We use these defining truths to help us stay in the lines of ourselves. We think we have to hold on to these labels, we feel comfortable holding on to these labels, but it turns out the labels are removable, you can peel them right off.”
― Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life

“If one is generously contracted 80 years, that amounts to 29,220 days on Earth. Playing that out, how many more times then, really, do I get to look at a tree? 12,395? There has to be an exact number. Let’s just say it is 12,395. Absolutely, that is a lot, but it is not infinite, and anything less than infinite seems too measly a number and is not satisfactory. Also, I would like to stare at my kids a few million more times. I could stare at them a few million more times easy.”
― Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal