Jo Piazza > Quotes

“When you wake up next to someone every day, pick their hair out of the drain, clean up their dirty dishes, socks, and underwear, listen to them bitch about their job and tell the same stories and jokes over and over again, it's nice to be reminded of what it's like when they're not around - and to realize things are better when they are.”
― Jo Piazza, How to Be Married: What I Learned from Real Women on Five Continents About Surviving My First (Really Hard) Year of Marriage

“A woman cannot have real autonomy unless she has reproductive autonomy. My hope is that one day both Church and society will embrace this justice issue. —Donna Quinn”
― Jo Piazza, If Nuns Ruled the World: Ten Sisters on a Mission

“Oh… and we’re out of toilet paper.”

Then why don’t you replace it? It’s under the sink, in the same place I always put it after I buy it.”
― Jo Piazza, Charlotte Walsh Likes To Win

“Nearly every romantic comedy ever made ends with the wedding and leaves out the most interesting part—the marriage.”
― Jo Piazza, How to Be Married: What I Learned from Real Women on Five Continents About Surviving My First (Really Hard) Year of Marriage

“In college we learned from an Austrian hallmate that there was a German word for someone you immediately want to slap when you start talking to them—Backpfeifengesicht.”
― Jo Piazza, Everyone Is Lying to You

“Few things in life are as fundamentally satisfying as good, quick sex followed by a meal of mostly salty cheese.”
― Jo Piazza, The Sicilian Inheritance

“Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work.” —Mother Teresa”
― Jo Piazza, If Nuns Ruled the World: Ten Sisters on a Mission

“Now that she had no way to control the outcome of the situation, she was able to put it in perspective. Maybe the world didn’t need her to fix everything. She’d been smug about that, often self-righteous and heavy-handed. Plenty of people glimpsed ghosts of lives they could have lived. She had at least attempted this one. That was worth something. Wasn’t it?”
― Jo Piazza, Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win

“I look at my long-married friends and wonder if perhaps the quotidian nature of daily married life-- the repetition, routine, and perpetual proximity of another human-- makes it dangerously easy to become numb to whatever made you fall in love in the first place and to search for imperfections where you once only found delight.”
― Jo Piazza, How to Be Married: What I Learned from Real Women on Five Continents About Surviving My First (Really Hard) Year of Marriage

“The Western transition away from tribal culture has caused us a few great losses - one of them is the concept of true community. Without community we turn to the economy to replace what we’ve lost by hiring therapists, nannies, doulas, reiki healers and housekeepers. But it’s hard to hire a mentor, to find women and men who’ve been there before us and are willing to honestly counsel us about what marriage really has in store.”
― Jo Piazza, How to Be Married: What I Learned from Real Women on Five Continents About Surviving My First (Really Hard) Year of Marriage

“It is more a way of life, a spirit, a story we pass down, a way of reminding ourselves that the only way for a woman to survive in this world is to help other women.”
― Jo Piazza, The Sicilian Inheritance

“You’re going to suffer…but be very happy.’ That’s how I feel about having kids sometimes.”
― Jo Piazza, Everyone Is Lying to You

“When you've stepped in the shit you've got no choice but to keep walking until you get home to clean yourself up.”
― Jo Piazza, The Sicilian Inheritance

“and I love it, how the women helped one another, protected one another, found secret ways to cooperate.”
― Jo Piazza, The Sicilian Inheritance

“marriage, it had taken Charlotte more than a decade to figure out, wasn’t the sum of the moments like this, the ones that took your breath away and made you thank God for the person you married. It was the totality of the moments that weren’t wonderful, the crises you weathered together, and the people you became on the other side.”
― Jo Piazza, Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win

“He hates what I hate and that’s a real turn-on for me.”
― Jo Piazza, Everyone Is Lying to You

“With her everything was either insanely beautiful or a terrible disaster”
― Jo Piazza, The Sicilian Inheritance

“The room got eerily quiet because it was true, and when you bring up something that’s true, people need to stop and think about it for a minute.”
― Jo Piazza, Love Rehab: A Novel in Twelve Steps

“Since becoming a mother, I barely had time to remember all the things I once wanted, all the lived I hoped to lead, but sometimes the desire all flooded back and I felt a small death.”
― Jo Piazza, The Sicilian Inheritance

“A man can work from sun to sun”
― Jo Piazza, Everyone Is Lying to You

“They change the world every single day...through their actions, and living the way they believe Jesus would want them to live.”
― Jo Piazza, If Nuns Ruled the World: Ten Sisters on a Mission

“What the piece didn't capture was the fact that she still did the majority of the housework and a good deal of the parenting every single minute she wasn't at work. Max was forgiven for dropping the girls late at school or forgetting to pack juice or emergency underwear because he was the adorable stay-at-home dad. Other mommies swooped in to help him, so sorry for the hapless man whose wife made him shoulder the burden of parenting three young girls. You have it so easy. You're a goddamned hero just for being a man who takes care of your own children.”
― Jo Piazza, Charlotte Walsh Likes To Win

“What happens when a woman is left alone to her own devices, how quickly she loses her honor. Finding her diary was like a gift to me, a reminder of the importance of the work that I do, the importance of women writing their own histories and legacies.”
― Jo Piazza, The Sicilian Inheritance

“A man who could navigate a grocery store on his own without a shopping list would never know how truly sexy he was.”
― Jo Piazza, The Sicilian Inheritance

“Forgiveness is the grace by which you enable the other person to get up, and get up with dignity, to begin anew.”
― Jo Piazza, Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win

“A marriage, it had taken Charlotte more than a decade to figure out, wasn’t the sum of the moments like this, the ones that took your breath away and made you thank God for the person you married. It was the totality of the moments that weren’t wonderful, the crises you weathered together, and the people you became on the other side.”
― Jo Piazza, Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win

“I stumbled into the miraculous discovery of being loved without having to put so much effort into striving to feel worthy of it.

Maybe it's what we all want from the people we love: to be seen for exactly who we are”
― Jo Piazza, We Are Not Like Them

“Holy Shit,” the Hen influencer finally clucks about an hour into our captivity.”
― Jo Piazza, Everyone Is Lying to You

“Instead I wanted to talk about what it means to be an ambitious woman and what it often costs us. I wanted to explore how the media treats women and how women treat one another. I wanted to show how difficult it still is for a woman to run for office even though we all know we need more of us in government.”
― Jo Piazza, Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win

“Why’d you marry me?” “You were the smartest and most capable woman I’d ever met. You were my best friend. I never wanted to marry a woman like my mother, someone who needed a man to get through life. I knew you’d always want to take care of yourself. You made me laugh. You made me happy. I knew I’d never be bored.”
― Jo Piazza, Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win