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Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life

Amy Krouse Rosenthal

Top 10 Best Quotes

“I am a slow reader, and fast eater; I wish it were the other way around.”

“To get a true sense of the book, I have to spend a few moments inside. I'll glance at the first couple pages, then flip around to somewhere in the middle, see if the language matches me somehow. It's like dating, only with sentences......It could be something as simple yet weirdly potent as a single word (tangerine). We're meant to be, that sentence and me. And when it happens, you just know.”

“When I am feeling dreary, annoyed and generally unimpressed by life, I imagine what it would be like to come back to this world for just a day after having been dead. I imagine how sentimental I would feel about the very things I once found stupid, hateful or mundane. Oh, there’s a light switch! I haven’t seen a light switch in so long! I didn’t realize how much I missed light switches! Oh! Oh! And look – the stairs up to our front porch are still completely cracked! Hello cracks! Let me get a good look at you. And there’s my neighbor, standing there, fantastically alive, just the same, still punctuating her sentences with you know what I’m saying? Why did that bother me? It’s so… endearing.”

“In most cases, it is more satisfying to get a friend's answering machine and leave a cheery, tangible trace of your sincere commitment to the friendship than it is to engage in actual conversation.”

“On the occasions where we do have to participate, to do more than nothing, it is desirable to have a glass of wine to soften all the everything.”

“My brother, who grew up with three sisters, was I won't say how many years old when he finally realized that he did not have to wrap the towel around his chest when he came out of the shower.”

“A good soup attracts chairs. This is an African proverb. I can hear the shuffling and squeaking on the wood floor, the gathering 'round. This, from just five well-chosen words.”

“A friend sat next to a nun on a plane. He asked her what she missed most. "Wearing blue jeans," she replied.”

“It would be difficult to convince me that leaning has no effect whatsoever on the outcome of my bowling.”

“If you really love someone, you want to know what they ate for lunch or dinner without you.”

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Book Keywords:

beliefs, appreciation, sports, death, gratitude, leaning, life, bowling

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