Quotes from Amy Krouse Rosenthal

When you woke up, for a moment you thought you were the moon.

The same five letters can be rearranged to express my daily sense of—and relationship to—time. First from the viewpoint of childhood, then young adulthood, and now, the present. ACRES of it. . CARES about it. RACES against it .

Then again, Einstein (pretty good at math) was also quite clear when he concluded, There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.

Death demands its own designated punctuation mark. Maybe: ______ died/ It is a dividing line / everything on this side is different.

There are proponents of New Year's Eve, and there are proponents of regular Tuesday nights. I am one of the latter, much happier residing in the wake of the mundane.

Who am I? Oh, yes: I'm the kind of person who doesn't like fiction, country music, or cilantro. We use these defining truths to help us stay in the lines of ourselves. We think we have to hold on to these labels, we feel comfortable holding on to these labels, but it turns out the labels are removable, you can peel them right off.

IT IS one thing to accumulate woes bit by bit over the course of a lifetime. quite another to enter this world with impossible burdens, by no doing of your own, and find yourself unequipped to handle them and/or find that, despite every conceivable effort, they are mercilessly unshakable.

10. About these coincidences, the data and mathematicians are clear: Such things happen all the time. Then again, Einstein (pretty good at math) was also quite clear when he concluded, There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. 11. I'm going with B, everything.

If one is generously contracted 80 years, that amounts to 29,220 days on Earth. Playing that out, how many more times then, really, do I get to look at a tree? 12,395? There has to be an exact number. Let's just say it is 12,395. Absolutely, that is a lot, but it is not infinite, and anything less than infinite seems too measly a number and is not satisfactory. Also, I would like to stare at my kids a few million more times. I could stare at them a few million more times easy.

What stops me from taking myself seriously, even though I'm essentially a serious person, is that I find myself extremely ridiculous—not in the sense of the small-scale ridiculousness of slapstick comedy, but rather in the sense of a ridiculousness that seems intrinsic to human life and that manifests itself in the simplest actions and most ordinary gestures. For example, I can never shave without starting to laugh; it seems so idiotic.

I have remembered, I suppose, what I wanted to remember; many ridiculous things for no reason that makes sense. That is the way we human creatures are made.

People often share anecdotes with me. I know you will appreciate this, they say. Indeed, I can be counted on to validate the remarkableness of their tales, bringing my hands to my cheeks and exclaiming in all the right places.

As kids, our stock answer to most every question was nothing. What did you do at school today? Nothing. What's new? Nothing. Then, somewhere on the way to adulthood, we each took a 180-degree turn. We cashed in our nothing for busy.

A painter was asked why he became a painter. He replied, Because I love the smell of paint.

First (but not last) lesson about futility of trying to replicate good thing or good experience—never as good second time, only causes disappointment.

As kids, our stock answer to most every question was nothing. What did you do at school today? Nothing. What's new? Nothing. Then, somewhere on the way to adulthood, we each took a 180-degree turn. We cashed in our nothing for busy .

I always got the words pedestrian and Presbyterian confused. I didn't understand why Presbyterians always had the right of way.

What does sensitive mean exactly? he asked, and I tried to explain it to him as best I could: Let's say you see someone crying, and you don't even know them, but you kind of catch their sadness, it somehow jumped into your heart, and this makes you understand a bit how they feel.

When I read a magazine, I feel connected to the world, in on everything. When I read a book, I feel removed from the world, isolated, as if I've slipped off into a soundproof booth. It is the same with listening to the radio (connected) versus listening to a CD (removed). Both fill a certain need, balance the other out. There's the getting away, and then there's the coming back.

HAPPINESS I'm turning left. Look, everyone, my blinker is on, and I'm turning left. I am so happy to be alive, driving along, making a left turn. I'm serious. I am doing exactly what I want to be doing at this moment: existing on a Tuesday, going about my business, on my way somewhere, turning left. There is nothing disconcerting or unpleasant or unfortunate about this moment. It is exceptionally nice, plain, and perfect.

Being yourself seems like the most effortless thing in the world—duh, who else are you going to be? But it's deceiving, tricky, a summons laden with meandering and failed attempts—and then at last, so wondrously simple.

I HAVE BEEN WAITING for you at the northeast corner, by the Starbucks, as we agreed. for you to notice that I do not care. for someone like you.

Hold on to what is good, even if it is a handful of earth. Hold on to what you believe, even if it is a tree which stands alone. Hold on to what you must do, even if it is a long way from here.

The word literature enters the room with its nose in the air. But get it in a corner, ask the right questions, and it will reluctantly fess up to its humble origins. It hails from the Latin litterae, you whisper in your date's ear. It puts on a big act, but it literally just means "things made of letters.