Claire Cook Quotes

Never underestimate the joy of being married to the one man at the party who knows how to dance.

It's easy to look like Santa Claus when you don't have to buy the groceries.

The remnants of his adolescent vulnerability were all over his face.

But if you truly want to reinvent your life, you're going to have to learn to say yes. Even if it feels selfish. Or scary.

One day he finally got a math concept (converting between hours and fractions of hours, as I remember) he'd been struggling and struggling with, so I praised him up and down, and told him it was a good day, a day to remember. "It was just one minute," he said. "What's the rest of the day gonna do for me?" "Sometimes you only get one good minute a day," I said. "You just have to make the most of it.

I think turning fifty means you want to keep everything you already have, but you also want everything you haven't managed to get yet, too. Before it's too late.

If you trust in the process, forget about all the bells and whistles and just put in the work, disparate things can eventually come together and become something far greater than the sum of their parts.

Once you got started, all you had to do was keep placing one foot in front of the other, no matter how happy or sad you were. I'd taken that first step because I'd wanted to look better. I'd wanted my clothes to fit. But it hadn't taken me long to figure out that the biggest benefit was less about vanity than it was about sanity. Walking always helped.

Why one human being is attracted to another is one of the great mysteries of the world.

It takes courage to create,' he said. 'People are afraid of embarrassing themselves by not being good enough.'
Or maybe even by showing who they really are.

Everybody knows that once you past it, you can't go back.

He looks good for a while, but ya know, ya can't shine a sneaker.

Your problem, my darling daughter, is that you're afraid you're going to miss something. But what you don't realize is that, by not making a decision, you're missing it all.

Everybody does stupid things in life. Some of us more than others. You think you're going to get away with it. Or one or both of you just stop thinking. But it happens. And when it does, you can keep drinking it like poison, or you can put it behind you and go make the most of the rest of your life.

I had a system, too, though I was pretty sure I'd ever acknowledged it before, even to myself. My closet was arranged by size: Now, Not That Long Ago, Once Upon a Time, Never Again, and In Your Dreams. I didn't even have to check the tags to verify the humiliating range of ever-increasing numerals displayed on them. I wondered what size I'd be when I'd finally had enough.

What do I want? What kind of question is that? I want what everybody wants. I want someone who has my back. I want someone's name to put in the space after "in an emergecy please call." I want someone who will drink the other half of the bottle of wine so I don't. And someone to make it worth sitting down at an actual table to eat. I want someone who's dying to get home after a long day because I'm going to be there.

I will always have enough. I will always be enough.

I opened both eyes. Dread was sitting on my chest as if it were an animal. I mean, dread so real it had physical presence, like a Labrador retriever I could teach tricks to. Here, Dread. Sit, Dread. Roll over, Dread. Play dead, Dread.

glassblowing?" Noah shook his head. "My

I confronted the fact that I was not only talking to a dog, but answering for one.

But what if scrambling to pay the bills takes every minute of your day, every ounce of your creativity? What if you can't afford an au pair? What if you can't even afford an ordinary babysitter?

Time heals many wounds but this loss becomes the defining sadness of your life.

You can try to avoid getting hurt six ways from Sunday, but it still might happen.

There also wasn't one single bit of grass or dirt outside the airport. Even the median strip was a concrete sidewalk. Where did Atlanta's pet travelers pee? Maybe city dogs just learned to use the sidewalk. We kept walking. It looked like if we crossed the road that all the cars used to get onto the highway, we might come to a planted-up area, but we also might get killed.
Finally, I just lifted Cannoli up and plopped her down on a great big ashtray built into the top of the trash barrel. "Good thing you're not a German shepherd," I said.

Why is it that even when you're trying your hardest not to get attached, something still sneaks up on you?

I was a lot braver when I was eight.

Because nobody knows you better than somebody who knew you way back then.

A day or so later, Gary David Goldberg, who created Family Ties and Spin City and Brooklyn Bridge and owns a house in the area, stops by the store looking for something to read. He picks up a copy of Must Love Dogs from the display. His five dogs are waiting for him in his car. He turns the book over and sees it's about a big Irish family. His wife, Diana Meehan, is from a big Irish family.

You just pick someone who has your back and wants the same things as you do, and then you make it work.

There's life after divorce, Sarah,' my father proclaimed, not that he'd ever been divorced.

Maybe deep down inside we were all still in our formative years. Maybe it was never too late for any of us to change.

If plan A doesn't work, the alphabet has 25 more letters - 204 if you're in Japan.

Maybe part of find what you wanted was recognizing what you didn't want. Maybe there was hope for me yet.

I just figured that was the life I picked, so I had to make the most of it.

been tumbled smooth by waves

What are sisters for if not to point out the things the rest of the world is too polite to mention.

There were lots of kinds of men in the world. There were lots of kinds of dogs in the world. There were lots of men who acted like dogs in the world.

Honest, hopelessly romantic old-fashioned gentleman seeks lady friend who enjoys elegant dining, dancing and the slow bloom of affection.

even reflected glory can be intoxicating.

In surfing, and maybe even in life, the trick is to use the calm between the waves to position yourself for the next one.