The penguins that spent most of their time fighting were the ones with no chicks... It's like they're supposed to be taking care of their chicks. But because they don't have any, they have nothing to do with all their energy. So they just pick fights.
I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges, I see my father strolling outunder the ochre sandstone arch, thered tiles glinting like bentplates of blood behind his head, Isee my mother with a few light books at her hipstanding at the pillar...
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Sharon Olds
Each one of us has hated his or her parents at some point in early life … how quickly we turn around our feelings determines our extent of success.
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Sandeep Sahajpal
We realized that the version of the world they rendered for us was not the world they really believed in...
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Jeffrey Eugenides
I’d never heard my parents make love. If they made love, they did it silently, like bank robbers, like surgeons.
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Ottessa Moshfegh
No matter how long it’s been or how far you’ve drifted, no matter how unknowable you might be, there were at least two people in the world whose job it was to see you, to find you, to recognize you and reel you back in....
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Jennifer E. Smith
More Quotes By Maria Semple
Was it happiness I'd found in my long marriage? Or capitulation? Or is that all happiness is, capitulation?
That was happiness. Not the framed greatest hits, but the moments in between. At the time, I hadn't pegged them as being particularly happy. But now, looking back at those phantom snapshots, I'm struck by my calm, my ease, the evident comfort with my life....
Maybe that’s what religion is, hurling yourself off a cliff and trusting that something bigger will take care of you and carry you to the right place.
As far as I’m concerned, the only thing sweeter than seeing a friend is that friend canceling on me.
