Christine > Christine's Quotes

“But if the words struck her only lightly when she was nine, they stayed with her, gaining in density, to insinuate themselves whenever her performance fell short of perfection. They were less a mortification, she feared, than an actual statement of fact: B+ is all you deserve.”
― Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Two-Part Inventions

“Real, she imagined later on, was something else; it had nothing to do with things you could touch. Real was being seen, noticed, acknowledged, and later remembered. Real was people thinking about you when you weren't in the room. If others thought about you, then you must be more than a made-up dream. You need other people to be real, she decided. Otherwise you might just be a speck, an atom, inventing an elaborate story. It seemed like a paradox, but it must be so. She knew other people were real by thinking about them. Her thinking of her parents and her brothers, her school friends, were proof that they were real. They were both outside and in her head. But how could she be sure she was in anyone's head?”
― Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Two-Part Inventions

“She'd been prepared for him to say he was too old, she must put away that sweet but impractical idea, they would forget all about it and go back to being good friends. She had almost hoped he would say that; it would forestall the complication and entanglement, yet leave her with a grief to harbor, sad but tender, grief like a secret, soothing companion. But this! There was nothing soothing about this.”
― Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Two-Part Inventions

“Teenage girls, please don’t worry about being super popular in high school, or being the best actress in high school, or the best athlete. Not only do people not care about any of that the second you graduate, but when you get older, if you reference your successes in high school too much, it actually makes you look kind of pitiful, like some babbling old Tennessee Williams character with nothing else going on in her current life. What I’ve noticed is that almost no one who was a big star in high school is also big star later in life. For us overlooked kids, it’s so wonderfully fair.”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“Even now she felt the need to add, "At a certain point I realized that everyone has something like this."
"What do you mean, 'like this'?"
"Everyone has something they want but don't get to have.”
― Daphne Kalotay, Sight Reading

“No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.”
― Alice Walker

“That is the motto women should constantly repeat over and over again. Good for her! Not for me.”
― Amy Poehler, Yes Please

“You do it because the doing of it is the thing. The doing is the thing. The talking and worrying and thinking is not the thing.”
― Amy Poehler, Yes Please

“Because what else are we going to do? Say no? Say no to an opportunity that may be slightly out of our comfort zone? Quiet our voice because we are worried it is not perfect? I believe great people do things before they are ready.”
― Amy Poehler, Yes Please

“The only way we will survive is by being kind. The only way we can get by in this world is through the help we receive from others. No one can do it alone, no matter how great the machines are.”
― Amy Poehler, Yes Please

“You have to care about your work but not about the result. You have to care about how good you are and how good you feel, but not about how good people think you are or how good people think you look.”
― Amy Poehler, Yes Please

“Watching great people do what you love is a good way to start learning how to do it yourself.”
― Amy Poehler, Yes Please

“how a person treats their waitress is a great indication of their character.”
― Amy Poehler, Yes Please

“It takes years as a woman to unlearn what you have been taught to be sorry for. It takes years to find your voice and seize your real estate.”
― Amy Poehler, Yes Please

“I believe great people do things before they are ready.”
― Amy Poehler, Yes Please

“if you can dance and be free and not embarrassed you can rule the world.”
― Amy Poehler, Yes Please

“I have realized that mystery is what keeps people away, and I’ve grown tired of smoke and mirrors. I yearn for the clean, well-lighted place. So let’s peek behind the curtain and hail the others like us. The open-faced sandwiches who take risks and live big and smile with all of their teeth. These are the people I want to be around. This is the honest way I want to live and love and write.”
― Amy Poehler, Yes Please

“Either way, we both agree that ambivalence is a key to success. I will say it again. Ambivalence is key. You have to care about your work but not the result. You have to care about how good you and how good you feel, but now about how good people think you are or how good people think you look I realize this is extremely difficult. I am not saying I am particularly good at it. I'm like you. Or maybe you'er better at this and I am. You will never climb Career Mountain and get to the top and shout, 'I made it!' You will rarely feel done or complete or even successful Most people I know struggle with that complicated soup of feeling slighted on one hand and like a total fraud on the other. Our ego is a monster that loves to sit at the head of the table, and I have learned that my ego is just as rude and loud and hungry as everyone else's. It doesn't matter how much you get; you are left wanting more. Success is filled with MSG.”
― Amy Poehler, Yes Please

“Emotions are like passing storms, and you have to remind yourself that it won’t rain forever. You just have to sit down and watch it pour outside and then peek your head out when it looks dry.”
― Amy Poehler, Yes Please

“I think we should stop asking people in their twenties what they “want to do” and start asking them what they don’t want to do. Instead of asking students to “declare their major” we should ask students to “list what they will do anything to avoid.” It just makes a lot more sense.”
― Amy Poehler, Yes Please

“People are very bad and very good. A little love goes a long way.”
― Amy Poehler, Yes Please

“I recently hurt myself on a treadmill and it wasn’t even on. I was adjusting my speed and stepped wrong and twisted my ankle. I felt a moment of frustration filled with immediate relief. I didn’t have to actually work out, but I still got credit for trying. It was a gym snow day.”
― Amy Poehler, Yes Please

“Dancing is the great equalizer. It gets people out of their heads and into their bodies. I think if you can dance and be free and not embarrassed you can rule the world.”
― Amy Poehler, Yes Please

“I am introducing a new idea. Try to care less. Practice ambivalence. Learn to let go of wanting it.”
― Amy Poehler, Yes Please

“Your career and your passion don't always match up.”
― Amy Poehler, Yes Please

“nice manners are the secret keys to the universe.”
― Amy Poehler, Yes Please

“I know enough now to know I know nothing.”
― Amy Poehler, Yes Please

“We are all immigrants, a glorious confection of races and beliefs, united by the rock that we live on. As the years wash over us and new generations march into the future, family histories are subsumed into the greater narrative. We become, simply, Americans.”
― Alex George, A Good American

“High heels were invented by a woman who had been kissed on the forehead.”
― Christopher Morley

“Hollowness: that I understand. I'm starting to believe that there isn't anything you can do to fix it. That's what I've taken from the therapy sessions: the holes in your life are permanent. You have to grow around them, like tree roots around concrete; you mold yourself through the gaps”
― Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train