Quotes from Abigail Thomas

Good things happen slowly," said a doctor in the ICU months ago, "and bad things happen fast.

was between lives. "What is it?" I asked. "What is it we are longing for?" He thought a minute and said, "There isn't any it. There is just the longing for it." This sounded exactly right. Years later and a little wiser, I know what the longing was for: here is where I belong.

He said maybe irony is the lens through which we see the picture in reverse

Don't worry, I say, putting a PG Tips tea bag in her mug. It's been happening for years. It's not getting worse. Besides, I'm not hearing voice, I'm overhearing them. I just don't know what they are saying.

But we're all looking for the place we belong. And what is home, anyway, but what we cobble together out of our changing selves? Maybe there isn't any it, as my friend said, only the longing.

I am trying to convince myself that failure is interesting. I look the word up in the American Heritage Dictionary to find its earliest incarnation, but it has always been just 'failure.' There's no Indo-European root meaning originally 'to dare' or 'mercy' or 'hummingbird' to make of the whole mess a mysterious poem. I can find no other fossilized remains in the word. Humility comes along on its own dime.

It isn't just the dying part; it's the thought of the day coming when I will have already been dead five, ten, two hundred years. All those centuries piling on top of me, like so many fallen trees. The fact that I will neither know nor care is of little comfort because I'm not, as yet, dead. The only cure for the fear of death is death.

The thought that this happened and then this happened and then this and this and this, the relentless march of event and emotion tied together simply because day follows day and turns into week following week becoming months and years reinforces the fact that the only logical ending for chronological order is death.

My definition of fear is that it's a constant companion, a sidekick, riding you like a watch, going in and out of the days. I don't live like that anymore. The fact that I'm sixty-three has something to do with it. What I used to fear was growing old—not the aches and pains part or the what-have-I-done-with-my-life part or the threat of illness, none of that. I just couldn't imagine what my life would be like without the option of looking good.

our bodies often give us electric shocks, sometimes to the tune of dozens a day. It's not dangerous. We are electric after all, which is hard to remember because inside we are so wet. I breathe in and out, thinking we are really machines, fleshy machines, oxygen in, carbon dioxide out. Why am I not aware of this more often, us being such miracles, so well put together? Alive!

When I was young, the future was where all the good stuff was kept, the party clothes, the pretty china, the family silver, the grown-up jobs. The future was a land of its own, and we couldn't wait to get there. Not that youth wasn't great, but it came with disadvantages; I remember the feeling I was missing something really good that was going on somewhere else, somewhere I wasn't. I remember feeling life passing me by. I remember impatience. I don't feel that way now.

Being cautious is new territory; my specialty was leaping, not looking. These days I pay attention. You can stumble uphill as easily as down. Ice comes in smooth and corrugated. Plastic bags are slippery underfoot. A big dog can knock you to your knees.

She likes to think this is a real memory, but she doesn't know that she isn't making it up.

have not got to where I vow to remember this. But we don't get to choose what sticks. How many times I have run my fingers along a picket fence and thought, "This! I will remember this moment always!" and all that remains is the memory of a desire to hold on to a memory. My uncle told me that every fall the dragonflies in Brazil return to the lake where they were born to touch down once more before dying. I have taken it on myself to remember this for him.

Shhh," she wants to say to her husband as he speaks a pleasantry in her ear, "I am remembering being lonely.

I was in love with a poet. I'm in it for the pleasure, I told my poet once, in a moment of bravado. The poet grinned at me. I'm in it for the pain, he said. It ended sadly. The kind of ending where you wait together, holding hands and weeping, while off in another room, love slowly dies.

It strikes me that the physical details of the dying body are as intimate and predictable as those of the body making love.

Why does forgiveness irritate me so much? I ask Chuck. Because it's the ultimate act of passive aggression, he says. Because it keeps sin alive, says my sister.

Wonderful news, a lovely day, but I don't trust good news and I don't like good weather. Dread has been my faithful companion, and without it I am alone.

I tried not to think of this as an omen, but unwelcome thoughts enter my head all the time.

Good things happen slowly, said a doctor in the ICU months ago, and bad things happen fast. Those were comforting words, and they comfort me today. Recovery is a long, slow process. There are good days and bad days for both of us.

An unexamined life may not be worth living, but the overexamined life is hell. We talk too much.

Take any ten years of your life, reduce them to two pages, and every sentence has to be three words long. It's a good assignment. You can't hide behind a sapling.

Suffering is the finest teacher," said an old friend long ago. "It teaches you details.