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Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life QUOTES

Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life QUOTES

1 " Giving with no expectation of a return is the only way to give,” he said. That is, of course, the absolute truth, although I had not thought of it before. "

― Delia Ephron , Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life

2 " We don’t discuss death. Not that we avoid it. It’s just that here, we’re preoccupied with life. "

― Delia Ephron , Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life

3 " realize I hate the word widow. It’s sexless. I’m never using it again.) "

― Delia Ephron , Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life

4 " He was my true home. My first safe place. "

― Delia Ephron , Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life

5 " I’ve gotten to make my living by my imagination. That’s a lovely thing. "

― Delia Ephron , Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life

6 " Parkinson’s is a wicked illness, slowly diluting his ability to be in the world. His voice is faint, his gait unsteady, but he is, as always, charming, smart, and, most of all, interested in other people. "

― Delia Ephron , Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life

7 " The kitchen, dining room, and living room are mixed up together in a snuggly way, always warmed by the fireplace and the Aga. Peter has never seen an Aga, this gigantic iron cooking invention. I get to explain to him how it works, that the ovens and circular metal iron-topped grills are always on. I show him that you switch a pan from a high-heat grill to a low-heat one and control the cooking that way. It’s like knowing a foreign language. "

― Delia Ephron , Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life

8 " Julia has his pills on a timer, and every so often its bell goes off, startling us all, and Julia rushes to get the pills. God, illness is such an interference, and yet Richard’s brain is as sharp as ever. "

― Delia Ephron , Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life

9 " Richard still calls me “darling” in a heart-melting way. He tells me I’m brave to fall in love again and urges me on in my writing as he always does. "

― Delia Ephron , Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life

10 " she was pregnant. Life could still hand out prizes. "

― Delia Ephron , Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life

11 " I pretend to be who I was. We talk about being single after losing our husbands. We talk about dating at this age. We talk about Peter as if I’m dating him. She says she hopes I bought great lingerie. We discuss her Syrian writer boyfriend in Berlin with whom she’s off and on again. When we leave, Louisa tucks her arm in mine as we walk along Ninth Street, and I am panicking that she’s going to feel my PICC line. The port to it pokes out on my left inner arm. She is going to say, What is this? Or, worse, she’s going to know what it is. I feel, after this dinner, a sense of dishonesty—that I am not a friend. I am pretending to be a friend. "

― Delia Ephron , Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life

12 " Louisa and Marie are loving and caring, and these two dinners feel like betrayal. I mean, friendship betrayal. I take friendship seriously. A friendship is a trust. "

― Delia Ephron , Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life

13 " People begin as they mean to continue. "

― Delia Ephron , Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life

14 " Now he wasn’t going to be here to love me or to talk to me. To have conversations with me about everything. Stuff. What was on his mind. "

― Delia Ephron , Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life

15 " There we were, me and Honey. It wasn’t France, but it was somehow fine. "

― Delia Ephron , Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life

16 " Jessie has a kind of spirituality; it’s part of her wisdom. If she says, “You’re going to be all right,” it seems as if she must know that, that she’s in touch with spirits from somewhere or other. She has a simple beauty like she’s someone from the prairie, but she was raised in Southern California. She’s full of charming contradictions: earthy and spiritual, compassionate and tough. More than anything, I believe, Jessie is someone everyone tells their secrets to. "

― Delia Ephron , Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life

17 " And maybe he had more room for me in his heart. "

― Delia Ephron , Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life

18 " men I could ever be interested in, writers and shrinks. Because they both have emotional curiosity. This "

― Delia Ephron , Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life

19 " knowing (in her gone-ness that will always be part of me) that she would wish me to go ahead and find out what this is. I believe our hearts will tell us how to do this. P "

― Delia Ephron , Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life

20 " am someone who needs to adjust to everything. "

― Delia Ephron , Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life