Mary > Mary's Quotes

“[...]the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“You’re wishin’ too much, baby. You gotta stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone oughtta be.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“I am burdened with what the Buddhists call the 'monkey mind' -- the thoughts that swing from limb to limb, stopping only to scratch themselves, spit and howl.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“The body apologizes to the soul for its errors, and the soul asks forgiveness for squatting in the body without invitation.”
― Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

“Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.”
― Narcotics Anonymous

“Eighty percent of success is showing up.”
― Woody Allen

“If she can't spell, why is she a librarian? Librarians should know how to spell.”
― Ramona Quimby as written by Beverly Cleary, Ramona's World

“I really didn't realize the librarians were, you know, such a dangerous group.
They are subversive. You think they're just sitting there at the desk, all quiet and everything. They're like plotting the revolution, man. I wouldn't mess with them. You know, they've had their budgets cut. They're paid nothing. Books are falling apart. The libraries are just like the ass end of everything, right?”
― Michael Moore

“Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart.”
― Saki, The Unbearable Bassington

“If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”
― E.B. White

“I did not design this game; I did not name the stakes. I just happen to like apples; and I am not afraid of snakes.”
― ani difranco

“Maybe you don't like your job. Maybe you didn't get enough sleep. Nobody likes their job; nobody got enough sleep. Maybe you just had the worst day of your life. You know there's no escape and there's no excuse, so just suck up and be nice.”
― Ani DiFranco, Ani DiFranco - Little Plastic Castle

“No woman can call herself free who does not control her own body.”
― Margaret Sanger

“[Librarians] are subversive. You think they're just sitting there at the desk, all quiet and everything. They're like plotting the revolution, man. I wouldn't mess with them.”
― Michael Moore

“A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on.”
― Carl Sandburg

“It's never too late to have a happy childhood.”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

“A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Different roads sometimes lead to the same castle.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.”
― Anne Lamott

“You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”
― Anne Lamott

“Mothers have martyred themselves in their children’s names since the beginning of time. We have lived as if she who disappears the most, loves the most. We have been conditioned to prove our love by slowly ceasing to exist.

What a terrible burden for children to bear—to know that they are the reason their mother stopped living. What a terrible burden for our daughters to bear—to know that if they choose to become mothers, this will be their fate, too. Because if we show them that being a martyr is the highest form of love, that is what they will become. They will feel obligated to love as well as their mothers loved, after all. They will believe they have permission to live only as fully as their mothers allowed themselves to live.

If we keep passing down the legacy of martyrdom to our daughters, with whom does it end? Which woman ever gets to live? And when does the death sentence begin? At the wedding altar? In the delivery room? Whose delivery room—our children’s or our own? When we call martyrdom love we teach our children that when love begins, life ends. This is why Jung suggested: There is no greater burden on a child than the unlived life of a parent.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed