Katherine Heiny > Quotes

“Oh, the joy of a shared life! The joy is not - as many people believe - building a future with someone, or opening your heart to another human being, or even the ability to gift each other money with limited tax consequences. The joy is in the dailiness. The joy is having someone who will stop you from hitting the snooze button on the alarm endlessly. The joy is in the smell of someone else's cooking. The joy is knowing that you can call someone and ask him to pick up a gallon of milk on his way over. The joy is having someone to watch "Kitchen Nightmares" with, because it is really no good when you watch it by yourself. The joy is hoping (however unrealistically) that someone else will unload the dishwasher. The joy is having someone listen to the weird cough your car has developed and reassure you that it doesn't sound expensive. The joy is saying how much you want a glass of wine and having someone tell you, "Go ahead, you deserve it!" (Although it's possible to achieve the last one with a pet and a little imagination.)”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

“Fun. Wasn't that really the beauty of childhood? That you measured experiences by how much fun they were, not by how much work or inconvenience or tedious conversation they caused you? Of course you didn't think of the tiresome things if you were a kid, because you didn't have to do them.”
― Katherine Heiny, Standard Deviation

“Sometimes she though being with her mother was like crossing a desert: long, hard stretches of burning sand that exhausted you, but every once in a while, you happened on a little oasis of kindness.”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

“Josie thinks that the problem with being a writer is that you miss a lot of your life wondering if the things that happen to you are good enough to use in a story, and most of the time they’re not and you have to make shit up anyway.”
― Katherine Heiny, Single, Carefree, Mellow

“The worst part was that she’d given it to him. Yes, that was always the worst part. You gave it to him. You carved out a crucial little part of yourself, and you not only gave it to him, you begged him to take it. You pushed it on him, the way you might press food on a hungry traveler or money on a less fortunate relative. You were sure at that moment that you would always have an endless supply, or at least more than enough, because you were one of the lucky ones. So you gave it to him. You did”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

“Good as new? Was Duncan crazy? Jimmy would never be new, never be the same. How could Duncan not realize that every time you fell in love and it didn’t work out, it scraped out a little piece of you, like scooping out a piece of cantaloupe with a melon baller, and there were only so many times that could happen before the scoop marks started to show? That in really no time at all, your heart could become a cold, pockmarked stone?”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

“It occurred to Graham that here, finally, was the similarity between the two women he’d chosen to marry: they were both totally unrufflable, one out of iciness, the other out of obliviousness.”
― Katherine Heiny, Standard Deviation

“Oh, it was horrible to have a teenager’s emotions and a forty-year-old’s body. It was humiliating. It was depressing. It was degrading.”
― Katherine Heiny, Single, Carefree, Mellow

“She felt a sort of cellular-level sorrow and wondered if she loved more deeply than other people. Or was everyone else just more mature, more rational? More realistic? Maybe everyone else was right, and Jane was wrong.”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

“Does Gary have to come too?"
"You know as well as I do that Gary doesn't like to be alone after dark," Duncan said. "He says the toilet whispers.”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

“Rory was a pale, thin boy with no-color hair and eyes as dark and troubled as shadows. He seemed to have a great difficulty finding the bathroom, even though Jane had kept him after school to practice the route.
"See?" she'd said. "Just come out of the classroom and turn left and walk down this hall and turn right."
"That's what I do," Rory said. "And sometimes the bathroom's there, and sometimes it's not."
"It's always there," Jane said gently. Did he think it was the Brigadoon of bathrooms? "Maybe sometimes you take a wrong turn. Let's practice again."
"That's okay," Rory assured her. "If it's there, I go. If it's not, I hold it.”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

“You said back then that you were sorry you’d ever met him and that you’d never forgive him for introducing us.” “I know,” Aggie said. “But I thought he would always be there, waiting to be forgiven.”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

“Why is she so eager to be free of someone so gentle and kind? Is it fair to dislike someone solely because he reminds you of an earlier, awkward stage of your life? Probably not. But nobody ever said life was fair.”
― Katherine Heiny, Games and Rituals

“She should sit out here more often early in the morning. She and Duncan could have coffee here, start their day with calm and beauty. But she knew it was one of those things—like Sunday afternoon drives and mother-daughter yoga class and vacuuming the refrigerator coils—that she would think about but never actually do again, and that made it all the sweeter. — It was not for nothing that Jane taught second grade.”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

“The gentle smile, the burning sting, the anticipation of the follow-up appointment—their first meeting was like the very essence of love. A distillation of love. No wonder they’d gotten married. A whirlwind courtship; they were walking down the aisle less than six months after their first date. Yet no friend or family member protested or raised a single doubt—it was clear they were meant to be together.”
― Katherine Heiny, Games and Rituals

“Maybe in some relationships there was so much history that fondness and guilt and curiosity and familiarity remained separate elements and could never be melted down into friendship.”
― Katherine Heiny, Standard Deviation

“And yet, he knew Audra did genuinely feel the loss of these conversations, of any conversation that she didn’t get to have.”
― Katherine Heiny, Standard Deviation

“He glanced across the table at Elspeth and their eyes caught for a second, like two coat hangers before you shake them free of each other.”
― Katherine Heiny, Standard Deviation

“Aggie taught Jane to make Moroccan lamb meatballs and said bad things about people who used died ginger and that sangria was really a lower class sort of drink, and it was just like old times. Well, almost like old times, except that now Jane was the one that Aggie contacted, not Duncan. Jane was the one she texted when she had surplus tomatoes or homemade jam. Jane was the one Aggie asked for help when her washing machine went berserk and shimmied its way half out of her laundry room, although in that case all Jane did was dispatch Duncan. Jane was the one Aggie asked for advice on her bathroom tiles and then rejected the color Jane chose. "She does that", Duncan said. "She asks you your opinion when she already has her mind made up. Drives me crazy. Jane was the one Aggie called when Gary began having dizzy spells and blurred vision, and Aggie thought he might be having a stroke. Although it turned out that he was just wearing the wrong eyeglasses having accidentally picked up someone else's at the office.”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

“All parents want to hear good things about their children, but sometimes you had to say bad things. If you said the bad things to subtly, the parents didn't believe you. If you said the bad things too baldly, the parents got upset. Actually, they often didn't believe you anyway and then they got upset, too. It was like having an intervention for an alcoholic every twenty minutes for an entire working day.”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

“Here they were grocery shopping in Fairway on a Saturday morning, a normal married thing to do together— although, Graham could not help noticing, they were not doing it together. His wife, Audra, spent almost the whole time talking to people she knew—it was like accompanying a visiting dignitary of some sort, or maybe a presidential hopeful—while he did the normal shopping.”
― Katherine Heiny, Standard Deviation

“People in love were happy because being in love blocked all the other emotions out.”
― Katherine Heiny, Standard Deviation

“It was enough just to sit with him on the porch, looking at the dew sparkling on the grass and the sun shooting biblical-looking rays of light through the pine trees. She should sit out here more often early in the morning. She and Duncan could have coffee here, start their day with calm and beauty. But she knew it was one of those things—like Sunday afternoon drives and mother-daughter yoga class and vacuuming the refrigerator coils—that she would think about but never actually do again, and that made it all the sweeter.”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

“You take Boris’s hand as he bounds along on his long legs, your signal that he has to either slow down or pull you along. He tucks both your hand and his hand into the pocket of his jacket. You look up at his face out of the corner of your eye. In the cold, you watch him breathe perfect plumes of white that match the sheepskin lining of his jacket. You think how happy you would be if Boris thought you were half as beautiful as you think he is at this moment. You walk this way for a few minutes.”
― Katherine Heiny, Single, Carefree, Mellow

“She is still typing away when Monique bangs into the apartment, slams her bag on the table and says, "If I were a cat, my ears would be straight back right now.”
― Katherine Heiny

“Because we're doing this all backwards," meaning, of course, that their minds had fallen in love before their bodies did and what if their bodies got all stubborn and wouldn't fall in line?”
― Katherine Heiny, Single, Carefree, Mellow

“Remember when the Kerns put striped carpeting on their stairs and kept falling down them because they could tell where the edges were?"
Aggie laughed.
And glancing up Jane saw her shake her head just slightly and nearly imperceptible hug.
Apparently Aggie had decided, as so many women had before her, that being angry with Duncan was just not worth the effort.”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

“Graham marveled for the hundredth time that out of all the women he knew, Audra alone seemed to understand that the prettiest woman in any room would always be the one with the most confident smile. For a second there, he almost admired her.”
― Katherine Heiny, Standard Deviation

“War is hell, yes; but so is Cub Scouts. Or at least being the parent of a Cub Scout is. A subtler kind of hell where the people have no sense of irony, and they make you go camping in cold weather, and you have to carve small race cars out of blocks of wood, and sing songs that have a lot of verses, and attend den meetings, and help your child obtain all sorts of useless (and nearly unobtainable) badges. And then, after years of encouraging your kid to like Cub Scouts, you have to quick discourage him from liking it around age twelve so it doesn’t adversely affect his social life. Plus, they ban alcohol.”
― Katherine Heiny, Standard Deviation

“Graham was waiting for a sign. If he told Audra he was going to be out late and she objected, that would be a sign that he shouldn’t go.”
― Katherine Heiny, Standard Deviation