Abigail Thomas Quotes

The future was also the place where the bad stuff waited in ambush. My children were embarking on their futures in fragile vessels, and I trembled. I wanted to remove obstacles, smooth their way, I wa...

Napping is divine, but I no longer have all the time in the world.

I WAS ON A SMALL ISLAND ONCE, IN THE MIDDLE OF a great big lake, mountains all over the place, and as I watched the floating dock the wind kicked up, the waves rose from nowhere, and I imagined myself...

I am trying to make sense of this. Survivor's guilt, acceptance, there were words that made me roll my eyes; surely I was too sophisticated for such cliches... So now today I look up the word acceptan...

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

He is wearing an old overcoat from the Salvation Army in Easton, Pennsylvania. It cost five bucks ten years ago, Louise remembers. Henry is not interested so much in the bargain, he wants ghosts in hi...

A couple of years ago my sister Judy and I were each given a box of truffles. The tiny print said two pieces contained 310 calories and there were six pieces in each box. We were sitting on the bus he...

After all, there are those people we like and dislike, there are those people we love, and then there are those we recognize. These are the unbreakable connections.

Forget career, forget the future, forget existential worries, just get yourselves a couple of dogs, and everything will be all right.

There are those people who can eat one piece of chocolate, one piece of cake, drink one glass of wine. There are even people who smoke one or two cigarettes a week. And then there are people for whom...

Neurosis is for the young, who think they are made of time

Tirade Against He Passed Away You never hear it said, He is passing away. It is always a fait accompli. He passed. How I hate it. As if the body had nothing to do with it, as if the body hadn’t even b...

I am trying to convince myself that failure is interesting. I look the word up in the to find its earliest incarnation, but it has always been just ‘failure.’ There’s no Indo-European root meaning or...

I used to get upset if somebody I didn't like loved a book I loved. That's MY book, I'd think.

So instead of not-writing, I am painting. I’m not a painter, but I make paintings anyway. I use glass and oil-based house paint, which is toxic, and which you can’t buy just anywhere anymore. It’s bei...

…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 an...

Shopping is hope.

It’s easy to find that five or six hours have sped by without my noticing. I am having fun. This is not my world, these are not my fears. is great storytelling, and it is not my story.

She was tired of relationships whose greatest intimacy consisted of sitting up all night weeping while love died.

Yesterday in his hospital room my husband asked urgently, Will you move me twenty-six thousand miles to the left?Yes, I said, not moving from my chair. After a moment he said, Thank you, adding in won...