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Tell Me More: Stories about the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say QUOTES

Tell Me More: Stories about the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say QUOTES

1 " One friend told me her one big takeaway from three years and $11,000 of therapy was Learn to say no. And when you do, don't complain and don't explain. Every excuse you make is like an invitation to ask you again in a different way. "

― Kelly Corrigan , Tell Me More: Stories about the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

2 " I've come to feel downright uneasy with people who can't say no. What if they yes you to death and then secretly hate you for it? If they never say no, how can you trust their yes? Besides, no makes room for yes, and who doesn't want more room for that? "

― Kelly Corrigan , Tell Me More: Stories about the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

3 " That's how it works: someone important believes in us, loudly and with conviction and against all substantiation, and over time, we begin to believe, too - not in our shot at perfection, mind you, but in the good enough version of us that they have reflected. "

― Kelly Corrigan , Tell Me More: Stories about the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

4 " Learn to say no. And when you do, don’t complain and don’t explain. Every excuse you make is like an invitation to ask you again in a different way. "

― Kelly Corrigan , Tell Me More: Stories about the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

5 " Accepting things as they are is difficult. A lot of people go to war with reality. "

― Kelly Corrigan , Tell Me More: Stories about the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

6 " Minds don't rest; they reel and wander and fixate and roll back and reconsider because it's like this, having a mind. Hearts don't idle; they swell and constrict and break and forgive and behold because it's like this, having a heart. Lives don't last; they thrill and confound and circle and overflow and disappear because it's like this, having a life. "

― Kelly Corrigan , Tell Me More: Stories about the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

7 " Being in our lives *as they are* is probably one of the most common struggles people have. "

― Kelly Corrigan , Tell Me More: Stories about the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

8 " Like the padre said, life is a mystery to be lived. Live your mystery. "

― Kelly Corrigan , Tell Me More: Stories about the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

9 " I love you.
The first time the words pass between two people: electrifying.
Ten thousand times later: cause for marvel.
The last time: the dream you revisit over and over and over again. "

― Kelly Corrigan , Tell Me More: Stories about the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

10 " But the truth is that I’m always teetering between a mature acceptance of life’s immutables and a childish railing against the very same. "

― Kelly Corrigan , Tell Me More: Stories about the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

11 " I try to be one of the exceptional people who can live with the complexity of things, who are at peace with the unknown and the unknowable, who leave all the cages open. I tell myself: There's so much that you don't know, you can't know, you aren't ever going to know. "

― Kelly Corrigan , Tell Me More: Stories about the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

12 " There’s no greater gift than to help a child see their enoughness, their might. "

― Kelly Corrigan , Tell Me More: Stories about the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

13 " On the matter of God, I've stood in every square on the board: obedient believer, secretly hopeful, open-but-dubious. I've walked away from the board entirely, only to circle back. Today, all I can say is: I don't know what I think about God...I do know that I love many believers and pulse with gratitude that wants a locus and I wonder about the wonders I see around me and feel inside me. But I'm not sure of anything. "

― Kelly Corrigan , Tell Me More: Stories about the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

14 " The other problem with language is that arranging words into sentences requires we flip on our thinking machine, which necessarily claims some of our focus, so that as soon as we start deciding how to explain a feeling, we're not entirely feeling the feeling anymore, and some feelings want to be felt at full capacity. "

― Kelly Corrigan , Tell Me More: Stories about the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

15 " Do your work, I tell myself. And after? Find a patch of lawn and sit down and hug your knees to your chest and let everything you’ve ever been told and everything you’ve ever seen mingle together in a show just for you, your own eye-popping pageant of existence, your own twelve-thousand-line epic poem. The tickle of the grass on your thighs, the sky moving over you, sunless or blue, echoes from a homily or a wedding toast or a letter your grandmother sent. Remember something good, a sunburn you liked the feeling of, a plate of homemade pasta. Do your work, Kelly. Then lean back. Rest from the striving to reduce. Like the padre said, life is a mystery to be lived. Live your mystery. "

― Kelly Corrigan , Tell Me More: Stories about the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

16 " The skin hungers for touch, from cradle to grave. "

― Kelly Corrigan , Tell Me More: Stories about the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

17 " You can't be really loved if you can't bear to be really known. "

― Kelly Corrigan , Tell Me More: Stories about the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

18 " Liberated by the simple act of saying no—which I submit is impressive for any woman, and downright radical for one raised in the Nice’n Easy generation—my mom had always been able to find outs where others could not. Looking back, I think it came down to her impressive willingness to be disliked and her utterly unromantic position that people should take serious—if not total—responsibility for their own happiness. "

― Kelly Corrigan , Tell Me More: Stories about the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

19 " This forgetting, this slide into smallness, this irritability and shame, this disorienting grief: It’s like this. Minds don’t rest; they reel and wander and fixate and roll back and reconsider because it’s like this, having a mind. Hearts don’t idle; they swell and constrict and break and forgive and behold because it’s like this, having a heart. Lives don’t last; they thrill and confound and circle and overflow and disappear because it’s like this, having a life. "

― Kelly Corrigan , Tell Me More: Stories about the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

20 " Maybe being wrong is not the same as being bad, I thought, not a sign your insides were rotten. Maybe you can still be a decent-ish person, a person with a personal mission statement, a person who aspires to be someone habitually good and highly effective, and fuck up. "

― Kelly Corrigan , Tell Me More: Stories about the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say