Kelly Corrigan > Quotes

“Appreciation is the purest,strongest form of love. It is the outward-bound kind of love that asks for nothing and gives everything.”
― Kelly Corrigan, The Middle Place

“That's how it works: someone important believes in us, loudly and with conviction and against all substantiation, and over time, we begin to believe, too - not in our shot at perfection, mind you, but in the good enough version of us that they have reflected.”
― Kelly Corrigan, Tell Me More: Stories About the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

“If John Lennon was right that life is what happens when you're making other plans, parenthood is what happens when everything is flipped over and spilling everywhere and you can't find a towel or a sponge or your "inside" voice.”
― Kelly Corrigan, Lift

“Learn to say no. And when you do, don’t complain and don’t explain. Every excuse you make is like an invitation to ask you again in a different way.”
― Kelly Corrigan, Tell Me More: Stories About the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

“Even when all the paperwork-a marriage license, a notarized deed, two birth certificates, and seven years of tax returns-clearly indicates you're an adult, but all the same, there you are, clutching the phone and thanking God that you're still somebody's daughter.”
― Kelly Corrigan, The Middle Place

“And it occurs to me that maybe the reason my mother was so exhausted all the time wasn’t because she was doing so much but because she was feeling so much.”
― Kelly Corrigan, Glitter and Glue

“Minds don't rest; they reel and wander and fixate and roll back and reconsider because it's like this, having a mind. Hearts don't idle; they swell and constrict and break and forgive and behold because it's like this, having a heart. Lives don't last; they thrill and confound and circle and overflow and disappear because it's like this, having a life.”
― Kelly Corrigan, Tell Me More: Stories About the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

“Accepting things as they are is difficult. A lot of people go to war with reality.”
― Kelly Corrigan, Tell Me More: Stories About the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

“The mother is the most essential piece on the board, the one you must protect. Only she has the range. Only she can move in multiple directions. Once she's gone, it's a whole different game.”
― Kelly Corrigan, Glitter and Glue

“But now I see there's no such thing as "a" woman, "one" woman. There are dozens inside every one of them. I probably should have figured this out sooner, but what child can see the women inside her mom, what with all the Motherness blocking out everything else?”
― Kelly Corrigan, Glitter and Glue

“Your father's the glitter but I'm the glue.”
― Kelly Corrigan, Glitter and Glue

“Being in our lives *as they are* is probably one of the most common struggles people have.”
― Kelly Corrigan, Tell Me More: Stories About the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

“I love you.
The first time the words pass between two people: electrifying.
Ten thousand times later: cause for marvel.
The last time: the dream you revisit over and over and over again.”
― Kelly Corrigan, Tell Me More: Stories About the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

“Like the padre said, life is a mystery to be lived. Live your mystery.”
― Kelly Corrigan, Tell Me More: Stories About the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

“This tug-of-war often obscures what's also happening between us. I am your mother, the first mile of your road. Me and all my obvious and hidden limitations. That means that in addition to possibly wrecking you, I have the chance to give to you what was given to me: a decent childhood, more good memories than bad, some values, a sense of tribe, a run at happiness. You can't imagine how seriously I take that - even as I fail you. Mothering you is the first thing of consequence that I have ever done.”
― Kelly Corrigan, Lift

“But the truth is that I’m always teetering between a mature acceptance of life’s immutables and a childish railing against the very same.”
― Kelly Corrigan, Tell Me More: Stories About the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

“We're never ready for the things that happen. When the big stuff happens, we're always looking in the other direction.”
― Kelly Corrigan, Lift

“One friend told me her one big takeaway from three years and $11,000 of therapy was Learn to say no. And when you do, don't complain and don't explain. Every excuse you make is like an invitation to ask you again in a different way.”
― Kelly Corrigan, Tell Me More: Stories About the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

“I try to be one of the exceptional people who can live with the complexity of things, who are at peace with the unknown and the unknowable, who leave all the cages open. I tell myself: There's so much that you don't know, you can't know, you aren't ever going to know.”
― Kelly Corrigan, Tell Me More: Stories About the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

“I had thought a good mother would not elicit such comments, but now I see that a good mother is required to somehow absorb all this ugliness and find a way to fall back in love with her child the next day.”
― Kelly Corrigan, Glitter and Glue

“There’s no greater gift than to help a child see their enoughness, their might.”
― Kelly Corrigan, Tell Me More: Stories About the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

“Raising people is not some lark. It's serious work with serious repercussions. It's air-traffic control. You can't step out for a minute; you can barely pause to scratch your ankle.”
― Kelly Corrigan, Glitter and Glue

“We'll bury our mothers and fathers - shuttling our children off for sleepovers, jumping on red-eyes, telling eachother stories that hurt to hear, about gasping, agonal breaths, hospice nurses, scars and bruises and scabs, and how skin papers shortly after a person passes. We will nod in agreement that it is as much an honor to witness a person leave this world as it is to watch a person come into it.”
― Kelly Corrigan, The Middle Place

“My default answer to everything is no. As soon as I hear the inflection of inquiry in your voice, the word no forms in my mind, sometimes accompanies by a reason, often not. Can I open the mail? No. Can I wear your necklace? No. When is dinner? No. What you probably wouldn't believe is how much I want to say yes. Yes, you can take two dozen books home from the library. Yes, you can eat the whole roll of SweeTarts. Yes, you can camp out on the deck. But the books will get lost, and SweeTarts will eventually make your tongue bleed, and if you sleep on the deck, the neighborhood racoons will nibble on you. I often wish I could come back to life as your uncle, so I could give you more. But, when you're the mom, your whole life is holding the rope against those wily secret agents who never, ever stop trying to get you to drop your end.”
― Kelly Corrigan, Lift

“He defined me first, as parents do. Those early characterizations can become the shimmering self-image we embrace or the limited, stifling perception we rail against for a lifetime.”
― Kelly Corrigan, The Middle Place

“I've come to feel downright uneasy with people who can't say no. What if they yes you to death and then secretly hate you for it? If they never say no, how can you trust their yes? Besides, no makes room for yes, and who doesn't want more room for that?”
― Kelly Corrigan, Tell Me More: Stories About the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

“On the matter of God, I've stood in every square on the board: obedient believer, secretly hopeful, open-but-dubious. I've walked away from the board entirely, only to circle back. Today, all I can say is: I don't know what I think about God...I do know that I love many believers and pulse with gratitude that wants a locus and I wonder about the wonders I see around me and feel inside me. But I'm not sure of anything.”
― Kelly Corrigan, Tell Me More: Stories About the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

“The thing about mothers, I want to say, is that once the containment ends and one becomes two, you don't always fit together so nicely... The living mother-daughter relationship, you learn over and over again, is a constant choice between adaptation and acceptance.”
― Kelly Corrigan, Glitter and Glue

“Do your work, I tell myself. And after? Find a patch of lawn and sit down and hug your knees to your chest and let everything you’ve ever been told and everything you’ve ever seen mingle together in a show just for you, your own eye-popping pageant of existence, your own twelve-thousand-line epic poem. The tickle of the grass on your thighs, the sky moving over you, sunless or blue, echoes from a homily or a wedding toast or a letter your grandmother sent. Remember something good, a sunburn you liked the feeling of, a plate of homemade pasta. Do your work, Kelly. Then lean back. Rest from the striving to reduce. Like the padre said, life is a mystery to be lived. Live your mystery.”
― Kelly Corrigan, Tell Me More: Stories About the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

“It is one thing to be a man's wife - quite another to be the mother of his children. In fact, once you become a mother, being a wife seems like a game you once played or a self-help book you were overly impressed with as a teenager that on second reading is puffy with common ideas. This was one of the many things I had learned since crossing over into the middle place - that sliver of time when childhood and parenthood overlap.”
― Kelly Corrigan, The Middle Place