Laura Moriarty > Quotes

“You could push people away, past their limits, even accidentally, and then it was just too late to get them back”
― Laura Moriarty, The Rest of Her Life

“My mother says that when Mrs. Rowley is mean, which is generally the case, it is really because she is just unhappy, and who could blame her with a husband like that . . . She says this is really the only reason people are ever mean--they have something hurting inside of them, a claw of unhappiness scratching at their hearts, and it hurts them so much that sometimes they have to push it right out of their mouths to scratch someone else, just to give themselves a rest, a moment of relief.”
― Laura Moriarty

“Maybe children just want whatever it is they don't get. And then they grow up and give their children what they wanted, be it silence or information, affection or independence--so that child, in turn, craves something else. With every generation the pendulum swings from opposite to opposite, stillness and peace so elusive.”
― Laura Moriarty, The Rest of Her Life

“The young can exasperate, of course, and frighten, and condescend, and insult, and cut you with their still unrounded edges. But they can also drag you, as you protest and scold and try to pull away, right up to the window of the future, and even push you through.”
― Laura Moriarty, The Chaperone

“One way to remain
unfinished is to stop.
the other is to go on.”
― Laura Moriarty

“That's what spending time with the young can do—it's the big payoff for all the pain. The young can exasperate, of course, and frighten, and condescend, and insult, and cut you with their still unrounded edges. But they can also drag you, as you protest and scold and try to pull away, right up to the window of the future, and even push you through.”
― Laura Moriarty, The Chaperone

“Shooting stars are not really stars at all but meteorites, burning their way through our atmosphere, sometimes landing in the oceans and in the middle of farms...you could make wishes on them if you like, but they are really just pieces of rock falling down from the sky, and they could land on your head and kill you just as you look up to make a wish. Really, they're just rocks. They don't care about your wishes at all.”
― Laura Moriarty, The Center of Everything

“I know that sometimes when you are really worried about something, it ends up not being nearly as bad as you think it will be, and you get to be relieved that you were just being silly, worrying so much over nothing. But sometimes it is just the opposite. It can happen that whatever you are worried about will be even worse than you could have possibly imagined, and you find that you were right to be worried, and even that, maybe, you weren't worried enough.”
― Laura Moriarty, The Center of Everything

“Someone needs to give the Pope thirteen babies. Just for a week or so. See how he likes no birth control then.”
― Laura Moriarty, The Center of Everything

“She wondered when her daughter would realise that for the most part, people weren't that different. Young and old, male or female, pretty much everyone she knew wanted the same things: The wanted to feel peace in their hearts, they wanted a life without turmoil, they wanted to be happy. The difference, she thought, was that most young people seemed to think that those things lay somewhere in the future. While most older people believed that they lay in the past.”
― Laura Moriarty, The Rest of Her Life

“This is how it is now. This is my life.”
― Laura Moriarty, The Center of Everything

“It's like swimming, underwater, this whole year. I just close my eyes. hold my breath, and keep kicking.”
― Laura Moriarty, The Center of Everything

“She was a lover and a lewd cohabitator, a liar and a cherished friend, an aunt and a kindly grandmother, a champion of the fallen, and a late-in-coming fighter for reason over fear. Even in those final hours, quite and rocking, arriving and departing, she knew who she was.”
― Laura Moriarty, The Chaperone

“Worrying was painful .... but compared to the alternative, a privilege”
― Laura Moriarty, The Rest of Her Life

“You don't belong here if you are unhappy," she continued. "Your mother makes you hateful, and you make her hateful. It doesn't matter if she's your mother. It's an accident of birth. It doesn't have to mean so much."..."You belong where you have the best chance of being happy...”
― Laura Moriarty, The Chaperone

“Schopenhauer writes about marriage. He says getting married is like grasping blind into a sack of snakes and hoping to find an eel.”
― Laura Moriarty, The Chaperone

“Men don’t want candy that’s been unwrapped. Maybe for a lark, but not when it comes to marriage. It may still be perfectly clean, but if it’s unwrapped, they don’t know where it’s been.”
― Laura Moriarty, The Chaperone

“I think if Jesus would have been alive today, he would have been all about the pot. I think he would have really grooved on it, and that's why he would've gone to jail today.”
― Laura Moriarty

“They were still out on the sidewalk of West Eighty-sixth Street, the taxi pulling way, when Louise put down her travel bag, raised both arms and declared herself in love with New York City. 'It's exactly as I imagined it!' She let her arms fall and looked out at the street, at the honking, halting parade of cars, headlights bright in the dusking air. She turned to Cora with glistening eyes. 'I've always known it, my whole life. This is where I'm meant to be.”
― Laura Moriarty, The Chaperone

“She was grateful life could be long.”
― Laura Moriarty

“Well,” Leigh said, because there was nothing else. She looked back at the picture of herself and Pam in the blue dresses. “We did have it easier than she did. I’m sure we did. And I should thank her for that, I guess.”

Pam nodded. She looked calm, untroubled. Leigh, tapped her foot on the ottoman and glanced at her mother’s photographs. “But it felt like that was all she saw when she looked at us.” She leaned forward to get Pam’s attention. She wanted her sister to understand, to see things the way she had. “You know? I always felt like she never saw me, me as a individual. Do you know what I am saying? She gave us everything she ever wanted. But she never thought about what we wanted that it may be different. Or that we might need something that she didn’t. She never saw us separate from herself. She never saw us.” She paused, nodding in agreement with herself. That was it. She decided. She’d never put words to the feeling before, but that was it. That had been the whole trouble between them.

But when she looked back at Pam, her satisfaction vanished. Her sister’s mouth was pulled tight, her eyes wide. She looked away from Leigh, saying nothing, still the loyal confidante. But Leigh already knew. She knew what she couldn’t guess before, what Pam thought of the two of them on the porch swing, Kara talking, Pam listening. Leigh didn’t have to guess anymore. She could hear the words come out of her daughter’s mouth as clearly as they’d just come out of her own.”
― Laura Moriarty, The Rest of Her Life

“I am supposed to be where I go.”
― Laura Moriarty, The Chaperone

“She was every Cora she'd ever been: Cora X, Cora Kaufmann, Cora Carlisle. She was an orphan on a roof, a lucky girl on a train, a dearly loved daughter by chance. She was a blushing bride of seventeen, a sad and stoic wife, a loving mother, an embittered chaperone, and a daughter pushed away. She was a lover and a lewd cohabitator, a liar and a cherished friend, and aunt and a kindly grandmother, a champion of the fallen, and a late-in-coming fighter for reason over fear. Even in those final hours, quiet and rocking, arriving and departing, she knew who she was.”
― Laura Moriarty, The Chaperone

“...I am supposed to be where I go."
-Joseph”
― Laura Moriarty, The Chaperone

“If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do matters very much.”
― Laura Moriarty, The Rest of Her Life

“Perhaps all the difficulties of pregnancy, childbirth, and mothering in the early years wouldn’t”
― Laura Moriarty, The Rest of Her Life

“she also knew that the sadness she felt while pregnant, for strangers, for the entire world, did not feel like hormones so much as a kind of elevated consciousness, a heightened sensitivity to truth.”
― Laura Moriarty, The Rest of Her Life

“He was right to insist. If they put her on a train,”
― Laura Moriarty, The Chaperone

“Was it mad to at least try to live as one wished, or as clost to it as possible? This life is mine, seh would think sometimes. This life is mine because of good luck. And because I reached out and took it.
-Cora”
― Laura Moriarty, The Chaperone

“compassion is the basis of all morality.”
― Laura Moriarty, The Chaperone