Carole Radziwill Quotes

Caroline had a theory about relationships. 'You're much happier when you wait," she used to tell me. 'The ones that come to you are the only ones worth anything. It's like standing on the shore and spotting something in the water. You can splash around and try to get it, ot you can wait and see if the tide brings it in.

Afterward I tried to find something to explain what had happened—was it cloudy, were the stars out? But the night was ordinary. It usually is, I think, when your life changes. Most people aren’t doing anything special when the carefully placed pieces of their life break apart.

Ultimately what remains is a story. In the end, it’s the only thing any of us really owns.

There is the disease and the person, and though I am living with both, one has robbed me of the other.

The dead slip out quietly and leave furious holes in their wake. It’s Fortune’s strong suit. She keeps catching us unprepared, again and again.

Writing a book is like dating. It's exciting. It's dreamy. And after four years, I just want to end it.

Tragedy whores don’t feel the foundation break apart beneath their feet—the reeling blast of emptiness, though to watch them you might think so. They’re voyeurs. They feed like coffin flies on drama, embroiled in virtual grief and the illusion of heartbreak. They all have stories they want to tell, insist on telling, proclaiming their link to tragedy. Emotional rubberneckers.

You never know when something is going to happen to change your life. You expect it to arrive with fanfare, like a wedding or a birth, but instead it comes in the most ordinary of circumstances. The

And another regrettable thing about death is the ceasing of your own brand of magic, which took a whole life to develop and market—the quips, the witticisms, the slant adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest the lip of the stage . . . —JOHN UPDIKE, “Perfection Wasted

RULE #13: Don’t bear the weight alone when you can dump some on a friend.

But the night was ordinary. It usually is, I think, when your life changes. Most people aren’t doing anything special when the carefully placed pieces of their life break apart.

was Aristotle who said it: “All human actions have one or more of seven causes,” and then he named them: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire.

Nothing is ever as it seems. We hide our reality from the outside world and from each other. We float along on process, Anthony and I—What will we have for dinner, did you call your mother, what time do you think you’ll be home? Phone calls and kisses and thank-you notes. You can lose a whole life on that.

You never stop thinking you might have beaten it somehow, and there were moments when we thought we had. Your husband can be dead years, and you can’t stop thinking how you might have beaten it. Or how they could have left ten minutes earlier, or the next morning. Or that damn lighthouse could have flickered through the fog.

They sing together softly, this children’s song, with their hands clasped like little boys. They sing it over and over, John holding tightly on to Anthony’s hand. They are in a place that no one else has ever been or could ever go, singing a song that John’s mother used to sing to the two of them. The boys who laughed and played and sang silly songs are all grown up now—John in a tuxedo, Anthony in a hospital gown. The doctors think Anthony will die tonight, and John takes him to the safest place he knows.

Manhattan, When I Was Young,

The dandelion is a gawky yellow flower that blooms and then collapses into a soft, clumsy down that little children blow wishes on.

Meeting him is instantly repellent, like lifting the lid of a garbage Dumpster. I imagine Dr. Best of the Best clinking ice in his Scotch at the country club, rocking back just a little on his feet—the other men asking him, So what’s the latest on cancer? And Dr. Best of the Best clearing his throat, careful to speak softly, frame his thoughts, move his free hand now and then in a certain way to brandish his words. Careful to reflect his Ivy League articulation. His friends, titans of business, are wide-eyed at how smart and serious the doctor is—how good to have him in their circle.

Maybe in ten or twenty years we’ll look back on chemotherapy and gasp. Another generation may be appalled that we ever did this, dripped poison through a needle into a person’s body to make him well. ♦

If you go down to the woods today, You’re sure of a big surprise. If you go down to the woods today, You’d better go in disguise. For every bear that ever there was Will gather there for certain because Today’s the day the teddy bears have their picnic.

Blue skies can be misleading.

Judy Pilger—and we followed them, crossing back and forth in a rowboat. But it was Frankie and Chris Nucci my sisters and I had crushes on, and mostly Frankie. Frankie had a speedboat and took his friends waterskiing up and down the creek. He sat on the top of the seat back to drive, one leg propped on the dash, coolly checking the skier behind him. He had silky hair and brown eyes and trickled a sultry cool through our world. The boys were more interested in my older sister than in me. She knew how to smoke and inhale. But I tagged along anyway wherever they went. We hiked down the falls to Tarzan’s Pit and spent the afternoon jumping off the cliff into the water. Then we’d climb up to the rickety wooden trestle that hung over the tiny waterfall to drink beer and wait for the trains to come. We’d show off for one another and stand up as the trains came roaring by with their whistles screaming in our ears. We hung

There are moments of sincerity. Those moments float away like bubbles but he takes the trouble to dip the wand in the soap and blow them through.

Tragedy whores don’t feel the foundation break apart beneath their feet—the reeling blast of emptiness, though to watch them you might think so. They’re voyeurs. They feed like coffin flies on drama, embroiled in virtual grief and the illusion of heartbreak. They all have stories they want to tell, insist on telling, proclaiming their link to tragedy. Emotional rubberneckers. I

Never discourage anyone who continues to make progress, no matter how slow” (Plato).

Carolyn has great faith in the zodiac. She gives me a copy of The Secret Language of Relationships and refers me to it regularly. She can tell a person’s sign after talking to him for ten minutes, and then how to fix his life, but I lack her intuitive skill, her propensity to solve. I lack her swift stroke.

It is said there are only two stories—a man goes on a journey, or a stranger comes to town; they are both here in mine. I took a journey, and Carolyn came to town. We were at Sea Song. I was washing dishes, Anthony was running on the beach, and John was reading the paper when she walked out of the bedroom, blonde and ten stories high, in a white cotton nightgown with eyelet trim. She walked across the living room and put a hand on my shoulder. She seemed to know me. “Hi, I’m Carolyn. You must be Carole. I forgot a toothbrush. Do you have one I can use?” Her eyes were as big as quarters and blue like a swimming pool and she spoke softly, almost whispering. I thought later, she didn’t want to scare me away. I was wearing red-denim shorts and a white T-shirt tucked in. I remember this because she teased me about it for years. “You should have seen Carole when I met her, this sweet little thing, with her belted shorts and tucked-in shirt.” She told anyone who would listen. We had a story, like an old couple, about how we met, and she loved this part. “What was wrong with wearing a belt?” “Lamb, no one was wearing belted shorts, and red! I thought, ‘Oh, my God, who is this little one?’ ” She made me believe I was captivating

When I close my eyes and think of her, I see her hands. She was completely unaware of them, but they were threaded through every word she said like melody lines, changing tempo and rhythm with her story. They were quick, jumpy but certain. “I don’t think we’ll be doing that,” she would say when something was ridiculous. Her index finger would draw a line around her sentence and stop, stabbing a sort of punctuation in the air. She had long, strong fingers. She wasn’t afraid to get them dirty. She wasn’t afraid to touch. She held my hand while she talked to me, or when we walked down the street. She played with my hair, absentmindedly, when she was making a point. It took me some time to get used to all the touching. She dismissed the barriers, the walls of politeness, the invisible personal space we protect. There was no awkward embrace with her, no hesitation. She hugged you tight, as if she might never see you again.

Where to start is the problem, because nothing begins when it begins and nothing’s over when it’s over, and everything needs a preface:

I'll start with the fairy tale.