Laurie Notaro Quotes

Poor Holly. There she was, completely unaware while millions of minute mucus particles, each carrying the flu virus, exploded into the air like rain. It was their germ mission to land on her and try to find their way into an opening of her body, much like a date I once had attempted with me. ~ Laurie Notaro

Books are to me as homemade tattoos are to an inmate. Can't get enough of them. ~ Laurie Notaro

I majored in journalism at Arizona State University, where I began writing the columns I write now, but I cannot, in good conscience, refer to myself as a writer. I'm a columnist, maybe a journalist, I guess I'm an author, but writer ... no. That's not up to me to call myself, that's rather lofty. It's for the reader to decide. ~ Laurie Notaro

It's a well-known fact that black sheep should never have lambs. You know what you get when you take a black sheep and give it a lamb? You get a thing called "supervised visitation" that's what. ~ Laurie Notaro

I could have spent my time hugging you or I could have spent my time telling you not to touch hot stoves or take candy from men. Which did you want? ~ Laurie Notaro

As a result of that experience, I do think all Anthropologies should provide a courtesy volcano just outside their dressing rooms so every woman who is revealed as completely inadequate by the lighting can throw herself in rather than contaminate the store staging for any longer than absolutely necessary. ~ Laurie Notaro

Suddenly, however, the dastardly department of my personality presented two plans, one of which involved dynamite, mustache wax, some rope, and train tracks ... which I rejected due to financial investment. ~ Laurie Notaro

Justin Halpern tosses lightning bolts of laughter out of his pocket like he is shooting dice in a back alley. In one sweep of a paragraph, he ranges from hysterical to disgusting to touching
and does it all seamlessly. Sh*t My Dad Says is a really, really funny book. ~ Laurie Notaro

If you really want to be afraid for mankind, you don't even need to know who Paul Ryan is. All you have to do is lurk for five minutes by the pharmacy. ~ Laurie Notaro

How bad do you want cancer? Bad enough to eat a rainbow of it? Personally, I think the red cancer would be the worst, but anything you swallow with artificial hues in it is going to pop a tumor out of your body the day after you eat it. ~ Laurie Notaro

Everyone knows there's only one thing less welcome on a stage than a mime, and that's a clown, because everyone knows that clowns eat people. ~ Laurie Notaro

I've had to write a column an hour after I've come back from a funeral. A deadline is a deadline, I mean, that was just what my job was. ~ Laurie Notaro

Once I had been jerked back to reality, like I was in a log on Splash Mountain and someone quickly applied the brakes, I knew this had been a terrible choice, but I was in it now. There was no getting out; there was no abandoning the mission. ~ Laurie Notaro

Hadn't one of my all-time favorite reveries been to become a cranky hermit, live unperturbed in my house, and have things brought to me like a monarch or tribal lord? ~ Laurie Notaro

It's okay," my husband said, shuffling toward his study. "I bought an electric-powered chain saw with a plug-in cord so if I run away fast enough, you can only chase me so far. ~ Laurie Notaro

I've never really considered doing stand up, but I have done readings/spoken word things fairly often in which I'll just tell a bunch of stories and run off at the mouth. I'm a big tangent person. ~ Laurie Notaro

It was 1976.
It was one of the darkest days of my life when that nurse, Mrs. Shimmer, pulled out a maxi pad that measured the width and depth of a mattress and showed us how to use it. It had a belt with it that looked like a slingshot that possessed the jaw-dropping potential to pop a man's head like a gourd. As she stretched the belt between the fingers of her two hands, Mrs. Shimmer told us becoming a woman was a magical and beautiful experience.

I remember thinking to myself, You're damn right it had better be magic, because that's what it's going to take to get me to wear something like that, Tinkerbell! It looked like a saddle. Weighed as much as one, too. Some girls even cried.
I didn't.
I raised my hand.
"Mrs. Shimmer," I asked the cautiously, "so what kind of security napkins do boys wear when their flower pollinates? Does it have a belt, too?"
The room got quiet except for a bubbling round of giggles.
"You haven't been paying attention, have you?" Mrs. Shimmer accused sharply. "Boys have stamens, and stamens do not require sanitary napkins. They require self control, but you'll learn that soon enough."
I was certainly hoping my naughty bits (what Mrs. Shimmer explained to us was like the pistil of a flower) didn't get out of control, because I had no idea what to do if they did. ~ Laurie Notaro

I'm nicer on tax day than I am when I'm on deadline. ~ Laurie Notaro

I have more faith in my bra than I have in my accountant. ~ Laurie Notaro

If another person got on that elevator to travel eight feet upward, I couldn't have been responsible for what I did. I had been pushed to the limit. The next time it happens, I swore to myself, I'm going to reach out and pinch that One Floorer and say, You get out there and walk! You won't come close to burning a fraction of the three thousand calories you ate at lunch, but maybe by the time you reach the landing, you'll pass out from exhaustion and get to go home for the rest of the day, you lazy little asshole, because that's exactly what you want anyway! ~ Laurie Notaro

I could croak with no warning, and the only tragedy anyone would experience would be showing up on the last day of my estate sale simply to discover that all remaining items had copious amounts of dog hair on them. ~ Laurie Notaro

Dr. Bone Specialist came in, made me stand up and hobble across the room, checked my reflexes, and then made me lie down on the table. He bent my right knee this way and that, up and down, all the way out to the side and in. Then he did the same with my left leg. He ordered X rays then started to leave the room. I panicked. I MUST GET DRUGS.

"What can I take for the pain?" I asked him before he got out the door.

"You can take some over the counter ibuprofen," he suggested. "But I wouldn't take more than nine a day."

I choked. Nine a day? I'd been popping forty. Nine a day? Like hell. I couldn't even go to the bathroom on my own, I hadn't slept in three weeks, and my normally sunny cheery disposition had turned into that of a very rabid dog. If I didn't get good drugs and get them now, it was straight to Shooter's World and then Walgreens pharmacy for me.

"I don't think you understand," I explained. "I can't go to work. I have spent the last four days with my mother who is addicted to QVC, watching jewelry shows, doll shows and make-up shows. I almost ordered a beef-jerky maker! Give me something, or I'm going to use your calf muscles to make the first batch!"

Without further ado, he hastily scribbled out a prescription for some codeine and was gone. I was happy.

My mother, however, had lost the ability to speak. ~ Laurie Notaro

As soon as Nicholas was born, my mother swore she'd rather see her daughters become Jehovah's Witnesses or pole dancers before she saw her first grandchild in daycare when my sister went back to work. I don't think it was originally the idea of daycare that didn't sit well with her but the fact that there, in a bassinet, was a fresh slate, a lump of clay that could be worked on and molded into the perfect child who had eluded her the first time around with her own daughters. ~ Laurie Notaro

Oh boy. Too drunk to hold on to a whiskey and Coke and the word "pretty." That's not a combination with a positive outcome. Not good at all. That's the secret password that usually leaves me trying to find a ride home in the morning. ~ Laurie Notaro

Are you kidding I was raised Catholic, my mom just came back from a Saint Francis Pilgrimage in Italy and bought a huge statue to prove it, big as you. Big as you. Catholics aren't like that, they can be a little slutty at times, sure and there's the pedophilia, but they aren't allowed to be strippers! It's not allowed! ~ Laurie Notaro

Whaddaya mean 'old maids,' ha? The term is 'unclaimed treasure,' buddy, 'unclaimed treasure! ~ Laurie Notaro

Sure, I'd like to lose some weight, but a tapeworm is the last way I'd like to do it, except becoming a prisoner of war. ~ Laurie Notaro

If Nana thinks you're trying to scam her, she'll tell you, and if she thinks you ruined her life by discontinuing Arnold's Thin bread, she'll let you know that, too. I guess when you spend eighty-seven years swallowing other people's bullshit, there comes a time when you gotta spit some back. ~ Laurie Notaro

So I graduated from college with a degree in journalism and was ready to find my dream job at a newspaper in addition to one good man who owned his own car and was certain about his sexuality, my two new, revised qualifying criteria for a potential date. ~ Laurie Notaro

If there was a National Tweaker Olympics, Oregon would bring home the gold in every category (Living in Squalor, Poisoning Your Neighbors, Developing Facial Scabs, Public Aggression, Theft of Useless Things, Taking Stuff Apart, and Crazy Talking). ~ Laurie Notaro

Have you ever held a gun before?" the lady whom I was meeting with asked me.
No, n,: I siad with a little nervous laugh, feeling a little underqualified for the job. "My family were staunch believers in physical violence, not automatic violence, and we had a Safeway around the corner, so we never really needed to kill anything. ~ Laurie Notaro

Is it just another pore expanding? God, I already have pores the size of pudding cups, that's the last thing I need, another pore ... to fill in with spackle. ~ Laurie Notaro

Be honest with yourself; set the alarm for the time the Real You will get up, not the Ambitious You, because the Ambitious You doesn't really exist. ~ Laurie Notaro

I need to learn to recognize and identify these danger signs when I see them, and not brush them off as "eccentricities," "lovable oddities," or "a sign that he s crying out for help and the comforting of a codependent nurturer that only I, Princess Enabler, can provide. Bad boyfriends don't disguise themselves; their girlfriends do it for them. ~ Laurie Notaro

If you really believe in what you're doing, work hard, take nothing personally and if something blocks one route, find another. Never give up. ~ Laurie Notaro

The lesson here is that a giant cupcake tattoo is typically an indication of two things: (1) Sister go her hands on some crystal meth, and (2) Sister smoked that crystal meth and kept smoking it until she had been awake for seven days and then stumbled into a tattoo parlor with a really bad idea that she had quickly sketched on a napkin from Carl's Jr. ~ Laurie Notaro

It was the gift that every girl dreams of, to be dead long enough for your parents to realize how meaningless their lives were without you, how they were suddenly and at once deeply sorrowed at all of the horrible injustices they caused you, how they had truly never appreciated your natural gifts of beauty and grace, being that their beautiful angel would have such a short time on earth and should have spent that time driving the restored 1965 convertible Mustang she had openly AND PUBLICLY desired. But nope, she spent her last, short, fleeting moments driving a 1980 Chevy Citation, every so clearly a GRANDMA car, with fake red-velvet upholstery, a hatchback, and an interior that smelled like spoiled milk and sometimes meat. Being temporarily run over by a car was the best present I had ever received, and I didn't even have to do anything dramatic to get it, like write a note or buy some rope. ~ Laurie Notaro

I'm not big on meeting new people, especially new people I'm never going to see again. There's all kinds of uninteresting, insincere banter, I have to pretend to be a nice person, and because 96 percent of the world's population are dim bulbs, odds are excellent that I'll be stuck in the middle of a Spontaneous Freak Encounter. ~ Laurie Notaro

I don't know how they do it. I don't know how anybody
does it, waking up every morning and eating and moving
from the bus to the assembly line, where the teacherbots
inject us with Subject A and Subject B, and passing
every test they give us. Our parents provide the list of
ingredients and remind us to make healthy choices: one
sport, two clubs, one artistic goal, community service, no
grades below a B, because really, nobody's average, not
around here. It's a dance with complicated footwork and
a changing tempo.
I'm the girl who trips on the dance floor and can't find
her way to the exit. All eyes on me. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

The suffragettes were all about speaking up, screaming for their rights. You can't speak up for your right to be silent. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

People assume that I'm very highly trained, that I studied and did years and years of Shakespeare. I have no training whatsoever and I've only done one Shakespeare play at university. If people want to believe that, I'm happy to go along with it. ~ Hugh Laurie

I've always felt robbed of something by people not knowing I was a Jew. ~ Piper Laurie

Breaking up is the hardest thing we do. It's the most important thing we do, in a way. You've got to embrace rejection, or you'll maintain a very limited life. It'll be very nice and neat - and very, very small. ~ Laurie Helgoe

Dead girl walking" the boys say in the halls.
"Tell us your secrets" the girls whisper, one toilet to another.
"I am that girl. I am the spaces between my thighs, daylight shinning through. I am the bones they want, wired on a porcelain frame. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

I can never tell with moments of silence. They're so ... silent. Empty. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

My environmentalism reared its head around the age of ten when I inexplicably become obsessed with littering. For some reason I considered it my personal responsibility to pick up litter wherever I found it and yell at anyone I saw contributing to the problem (much to the horror of my mother). I was a ten-year-old on a mission to clean up the streets! But it was years later when I became a mother myself that concern for my kids' future really ignited my passion and set me on my course. Once I started reading and educating myself, there was no turning back. ~ Laurie David

After all, lies that make other people feel better must be kind of okay. ~ Laurie Elizabeth Flynn

I'm a big 'Star Trek' fan. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

Wes knocks a couple of times, but Adam doesn't answer. "Jackpot," he says, kneeling down to examine the lock. He takes the bundle of wire from his pocket and proceeds to make a key of sorts.
"You're not going to break in?" I ask.
"Well, um, yeah. Kimmie rolls her eyes, as if the answer's completely obvious.
Wes sticks his key into the lock and starts to jiggle it back and forth. A moment later, the doorknob turns.
Only, Wes isn't the one turning it.
Piper then whips the door open. "Oh, my god," she says, smacking her chest like we've scared her, too.
"We were looking for Adam." I peek past her into the apartment.
"He isn't here," she says, glaring up at Wes, no doubt annoyed that he's attempting to pick the lock.
"Would you believe that I dropped the contact?" he asks, before finally getting up.
"Not likely, since you're wearing glasses."
Kimmie bops him on the head with her Tupperware purse. ~ Laurie Faria Stolarz

At no time in history have we succeeded in making, in a timely fashion, a specific vaccine for more than 260 million people. ~ Laurie Garrett

Pride is a sweetmeat, to be savoured in small pieces; it makes for a poor feast. ~ Laurie R. King

Even professional, paid carers aren't always models of saintly behaviour - and they know they can knock off at the end of their shift to go home, take an uninterrupted shower, and have a normal conversation with someone. ~ Laurie Graham

Maybe trust is the brake I'm looking for. ~ Laurie Elizabeth Flynn

It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to make a blues record. ~ Hugh Laurie

INCLUSION - It's amazing what happens when we allow the flower that is us, the flower that is them, to become part of the bouquet. ~ Laurie Buchanan

And I decide to stop inwardly composing the feminist world court's prosecutorial summation to the jury. ~ Laurie Viera Rigler

My favourite thing is to discover what someone does well and say, 'Do that for me.' ~ Laurie Simmons

When your intuition is right, thank the part of you that knows how to do that truly remarkable job. ~ Laurie Nadel

There was a loud shuffling above. A line of redcoats took their position at the edge of the ravine and aimed down at the rebels.
"Present!" the British officer screamed to his men.
"Present!" yelled the American officer. His men brought the butts of their muskets up to their shoulders and sighted down the long barrels, ready to shoot and kill.
I pressed my face into the earth, unable to plan a course of escape. My mind would not be mastered and thought only of the wretched, lying, foul, silly girl who was the cause of everything.
I thought of Isabel and I missed her.
"FIRE! ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

Picasso." He whispers like a priest. "Picasso. Who saw the truth. Who painted the truth, molded it, ripped from the earth with two angry hands. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

Shining in the midnight moonlight, while the King sings love me tender. ~ Laurie Anderson

That's what tears are for, you know, to wash away the fear and cool the hate. ~ Laurie R. King

As a real person, he wouldn't last a minute, would he? But drama is about imperfection. And we've moved away from the aspirational hero. We got tired of it, it was dull. If I was House's friend, I would hate it. How he so resolutely refuses to be happy or take the kind-hearted road. But we don't always like morally good people, do we? ~ Hugh Laurie

Kids are mostly very resilient. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

Were she not aware that he was more than a man who could make plants grow. And ~ Laurie R. King

I'm serious," I say. "I don't want to lose him."
"Then maybe you should go away for a little bit. After all, absence makes the heart grow horny, right?"
"That's not exactly how the saying goes."
"But it should, because you know it's true. If you go away for a couple of days, Ben won't know what to do with himself."
"Maybe you're right," I say, tossing more candy corn into my mouth (therapy in a bag).
"Damn straight, I am. Now, the biggest question: Can I fit into your suitcase? Because I really don't feel like staying here by myself. ~ Laurie Faria Stolarz

Why not spend that time on art: painting, sculpting, charcoal, pastel, oils? Are words or numbers more important than images? Who decides this? Does algebra move you to tears? Can plural possessives express the feelings in your heart? If you don't learn art now, you will never learn to breathe! ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

She says suicide is for cowards. This is an uglynasty Momside. She bought a book about it. Tough love. Sour sugar. Barbed velvet. Silent talk. She leaves the book on the back of the toilet to educate me. She has figured out that I don't say too much. It bugs her. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

Hepatitis C was a devastating disease but because fundamental research was done in hepatitis C, it is now curable. It is now absolutely curable with new medications. So this is transformative. ~ Laurie Glimcher

Let's commit ourselves to being true disciples of Jesus Christ. Not mere fair-weather followers, but disciples. ~ Greg Laurie

What lady do you think prettiest?" Said Sallie.
"Margaret."
"Which do you like the best?"
"Jo, of course."
"What silly questions you ask!" and Jo gave a disdainful shrug as the rest laughed at Laurie's matter-of-fact tone ~ Louisa May Alcott

I showed her how I'd been making tiny cuts in my skin to let the badness and the pain leak out. They were shallow at first, and short, like claw marks made by a desperate cat that wanted to hid under the front porch. Cutting pain was a different flavor of hurt. It made it easier not to think about having my body and my family and my life stolen, made it easier not to care ... ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

Rayner, I estimated, was ten years older than me. Which was fine. Nothing wrong with that. I have good, warm, non-arm-breaking relationships with plenty of people who are ten years older than me. People who are ten years older than me are, by and large, admirable. But Rayner was also three inches taller than me, four stones heavier, and at least eight however-you-measure-violence units more violent. ~ Hugh Laurie

I smile, bigger than I'm sure I ever have before, and his lips are on mine, and if this isn't the best kind of chemistry, I don't know what is. ~ Laurie Elizabeth Flynn

A good leader has a plan that consists of changing simple pictures. Just because a group of people has a bunch of boards, hammers, and nails does not mean that they are building a house or even anything recognizable. Sometimes leaders think they are doing their job just because there is a lot of hammering going on. As a society we like the sound of hammering, but we are uncomfortable with the sound of thinking, which is silence. ~ Laurie Beth Jones

We put this 15-year old girl on the cover of a fashion magazine, and tell everyone she is the epitome of sexual perfection, but we jail anyone who touches her for another three years. ~ Hugh Laurie

Suffering is a part of every life. Rain falls upon every life. All people encounter tragedy. Everybody struggles through hardship - not just Christians. But for the believer, for the child of God, whatever comes into our life first comes through the grid of God's plan and purpose for our lives. There are no accidents in the life of the believer. ~ Greg Laurie

I come from a coffee-loving family, and you can always tell when my sister and I have been around, because both of us collect all the dead coffee from everyone's morning cup, pour it over ice, and drink it. This is a disgusting habit. ~ Laurie Colwin

I roll over on my back and clutch the book against my chest; then I chuck it on the carpet. It's too heavy to rest on me, too full of history. Not all of it is bad. Some of the memories make me smile. Some of them make me mad. But more dangerously, some of them make me wonder what my life would be like as a girlfriend, what it would be like to have a regular relationship, with all its ups and downs and awkward moments.
I switch out my lamp and stare at the ceiling in the dark, taking a series of shaky breaths. I know that it's better this way, being the one in control. The one in control calls the shots, and the one in control sets the pace.
Most important of all, the one in control doesn't get hurt. ~ Laurie Elizabeth Flynn

If I had stayed in Hollywood, I would have killed myself. Or someone would have done it for me ~ Piper Laurie

I am almost a real girl the entire drive home. I went to a diner. I drank hot chocolate and ate french fries. Talked to a guy for a while. Laughed a couple of times. A little like ice-skating for the first time, wobbly, but I did it. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

I like cheeseburgers too much to be a model. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

That last winter was a tragic story and I got no personal honour out of it but I was a witness to it. ~ Laurie Lee

I'm one of the first Americans who wasn't a torturer or an interrogator. ~ Laurie Anderson

I see and write things first as an artist, second as a woman, and third as a New Yorker. All three have built-in perspectives that aren't neutral. ~ Laurie Anderson