Abigail Thomas Quotes

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...

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.

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...

THERE WAS A YOUNG MAN WHO HAD ARRIVED AT the Northeast Center angry and belligerent, as inclined to take a swing at you as not. He began showing up in Bill’s studio and started to paint. Bill watched...

I was young once and slender and pretty and I made the most of it. It's somebody else's turn now.

I have been trying to remember being young, which is hard because I don’t feel old until I try to get up from my chair. Or when I look at the photograph Jennifer took of me sitting on a stool next to...

The house had been torn down. Nothing is left but the old white fence. There used to be privet bushes everywhere. "The smell of privet is the smell of summer for me," I say to Catherine."Yes, Mom." sh...

I had always wanted to write but thought you needed a degree, or membership in a club nobody had asked me to join. I thought God had to touch you on the forehead, I thought you needed to have somethin...

You had a certain way of saying my name. It was the inflection maybe, something you put into those three syllables. And now you are gone and my name is just my name again, not the story of my life.

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

I can never make the same painting twice, not that I want to, I guess. Still, it would be nice to make a better version of something, or try it in different colors, but I never remember how I did it,...

Happy, for instance, once meant luck. Not good luck or bad, just luck. Look what we have done to ourselves. We think we can actually pursue happiness.

The last several years my life had begun to feel shapeless, like underwear with the elastic gone, the days down around my ankles.

Here’s what I love about painting. It’s not about words or voice or tone or point of view or narrative arc (perish the thought); it’s about the way certain branches stick straight out from the trunks...

Here’s what I love about dogs. They aren’t careful not to disturb you. They don’t overthink. They jump on the bed or the sofa or the chair and plop down. They come and they go. I’m not sure they love...

SIX MONTHS AGO A FRIEND WAS ANGRY WITH ME and I with her. I had written about something someone said many years ago, but it was she who heard the words, not me, a fact I had completely forgotten. Her...

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

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...

A friend's mother ate nothing but clams for six months. Morning, noon, and night, nothing but clams. 'I don't know what it is - I can't seem to get enough of them' she told her son. He shakes his head...