Clare Pooley Quotes

The truth often isn't pretty. It's not aspirational. It doesn't fit neatly into a little square on Instagram.

They want us to be small, so we have to stand tall. They want us to be invisible, so we have to be seen. They want us to be quiet, so we have to be heard. They want us to surrender, so we have to fight.

No woman is anyone’s “other half”. We are all entire people. Completely whole, and totally unique. But sometimes when you put two very different whole people together, a kind of magic, an alchemy, occurs.

Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack in everything That’s how the light gets in. —LEONARD COHEN

Meet force with softness. Recipe for life. Now you understand.’ And, strangely, he did.

in a world where you can be anything, be kind.

Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift,” she’d chant to herself as she brushed her teeth. “It’s not happy people who are grateful, it’s grateful people who are happy,” she’d say as she brushed her hair.

Mother is a verb, not a noun.

The only way to be guaranteed of failure, dear boy, is not to try,’ said Iona. ‘Love is the greatest risk of all, but a life without it is meaningless.

most endings turned out to be beginnings in disguise.

the best way to persuade someone to talk is to stay quiet. People, when confronted with silence, feel the overwhelming urge to fill it with something.

Preparation is the key to effective spontaneity.

Then he’d discovered that routines were crucial. They created buoys he could cling to to keep himself afloat.

It makes me furious that as men age, they gain gravitas. They become “silver foxes.” Women, however, become invisible. We cannot allow this to happen, my friends. We must all be more Iona. We all deserve, like Iona, to have a Triumphant Second Act.

Darling, what is the point of being alive if you go through life unnoticed, without standing out and making waves?

Monica, why does everything have to have a point? Why does it all have to be part of a plan? Sometimes it's best to let things just grow naturally, like wildflowers.

Perhaps the compulsion to fill every inch of space was because it made him feel less alone,

she just wanted to sit quietly and imagine herself in a world where she still mattered.

You have such energy. You're like the sun. When you're interested in someone, you turn your rays towards them and they luxuriate in your warmth. But then you turn somewhere else, leaving them in the shadow, and they spend all their energy trying to recreate the memory of your light.

Besides,’ continued Julian, ‘you can slam down a phone like that. You can’t slam down a mobile. Imagine, a whole generation who’ll never know the joy of slamming down a phone.

After I left, I learned to be my own sun.

How extraordinary that she had been envying Monica’s life, when all the time all Monica wanted was what she took most for granted.

Your anxiety is the other side of the coin of your empathy.

She appeared to have jumped out of the frying pan of sexism and into the fire of ageism. The final frontier of isms.

Tai chi is about the balance of yin and yang. If you use hardness to resist force, then both sides will break. Tai chi meets hardness with softness, so incoming force exhausts itself. It is philosophy for life also. You understand?

He had the rather uncomfortable feeling that he only really existed in the eye of the beholder, that when he stopped being noticed, he actually stopped being. Did that make him horribly shallow? And if so, did it matter?

When we first come here in 1973, two men came to restaurant and say, ‘Go back to China and take your filthy, foreign food with you.’ I say, ‘You are angry. Anger comes from stomach. Sit. I bring you soup. For free. It will make you feel better.’ They ate my wonton soup. Recipe from my grandmother. They have been customers of restaurant for forty years. Meet force with softness. Recipe for life. Now you understand.” And, strangely, he did.

But sometimes when you put two very different people together, a kind of magic, an alchemy, occurs. Bea said I was like eggs and sugar, and she was flour and butter, and when you mixed us together, we were more than just the combination of our ingredients, we were the whole damn cake.

Tai chi meets hardness with softness, so incoming force exhausts itself. It is philosophy for life also.

She feels most comfortable in the past, so we spend a lot of our time there now.

Anxiety is a sign that you’re pushing boundaries, moving forward, grabbing the bull by the horns. IT IS GOOD.

Hazard noted Monica’s use of a colon. It looked a little incongruous. He didn’t think people did grammar anymore. They barely did writing. Just texts, and emojis.

Everyone lies about their lives. What would happen if you shared the truth instead? The one thing that defines you, that makes everything else about you fall into place?

Surely it would be better to live a messy, flawed, sometimes not very pretty life that was real and honest, than to constantly try to live up to a life of perfection that was actually a sham?

The strange thing about reaching your fifties is that, although your outsides might be gradually falling apart, on the inside you don’t feel any different from the way you did in your twenties.

Everyone lies about their lives. What would happen if you shared the truth instead? The one thing that defines you, that makes everything else about you fall into place? Not on the internet, but with those real people around you?

How much time did her ovaries have left? Were they already packing their suitcases for a relaxing retirement on the Costa Brava?

My biological clock is ticking so loudly that it’s keeping me awake at night.

Mature'? Good grief! I'm not a cheese. Or a herbaceous border.

What I discovered is that telling the truth about your life really can work magic, and change the lives of many other people for the better.

One of the benefits of being an artist is that you spend so much time watching people, looking not just at all the shades and contours of their faces, but into their souls. It gives you an almost uncanny insight.

Emmeline Pankhurst didn’t chain herself to those railings so we could spend our lives as a tiny cog in someone else’s wheel. Be your own boss. Create something. Employ people. Be fearless. Do something you really love. Make it all worthwhile. So, she had done it.

Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack in everything That’s how the light gets in.

You know, there’s a fabulous Buddhist saying that goes: When the pupil is ready, the teacher appears . . . ,” said Iona, with a loaded emphasis on teacher.

Why had it taken her so long to see her train carriage as a fascinating portal into other people's stories, rather than just a way of getting from A to B?

Painting is self-discovery. Every good painter paints what he is. He said it’s about expressing your feelings, not just illustrating.

If you told a story enough times, it became the truth—or near enough.

If you’re going to get it wrong, Martha, make sure you get it wrong with PANACHE! Surely they’ll give you a mark for style, at least?

refuse to waste a single day more stressing about something I can’t control.

She thought of all her new friends, with their lives that didn’t look beautiful on an Instagram square, yet who were so much deeper, stronger and more interesting than that.

Where’s the fun in aging gracefully?” said Daphne. “Personally, I intend to age as disgracefully as possible.

Only a really great friend realises that there are few situations that can’t be improved by great stationery.

Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day. Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day,’ ” said Daphne. “It’s the closing party tonight. Let’s go burn and rave.

Meet force with softness. Recipe for life. Now you understand.

You don’t get to our age with a completely unblemished record. Not unless you’ve not lived. The trick is just to try to ensure the balance falls on the side of the good.

How lovely it must be to be an age at which you wanted to add quarters rather than subtract decades.

It’s not happy people who are grateful, it’s grateful people who are happy,

The only way to be guaranteed of failure, dear boy, is not to try,” said Iona. “Love is the greatest risk of all, but a life without it is meaningless.

The simplest things are the best, and really do not need artificial stimulants to make them any better.

It’s just stuff, Julian. You might find that, without it, you’ll feel liberated! It’d be a new start, a new life. That’s how it felt for me, leaving all this behind.

The magic of acting is it takes you out of yourself. It allows you to try on other people’s clothes and inhabit different worlds. It’s the perfect therapy when real life is too hard.

Marriage and family are all about compromise, surely? You have to work at it. It’s not perfect and easy and beautiful, it’s messy and exhausting and bloody difficult a lot of the time,

Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift,” she’d chant to herself as she brushed her teeth. “It’s not happy people who are grateful, it’s grateful people who are happy,

That’s the thing about the wine witch. She cuts brilliant lives short, and ensures that others are only half lived. She makes children grow up thinking it is normal for adults to drink all evening, every evening. She fixes it so mothers are woken up in the middle of the night by a stranger telling them their only child was found dead in a ditch, next to someone she barely knew.

How well do you know the people who live near you? How well do they know you? Do you even know the names of your neighbors? Would you realize if they were in trouble, or hadn’t left their house for days? Some people withhold the truth about their lives. What would happen if you shared the truth about you? The one thing that defines you, that makes everything else about you fall into place? Would you be willing to share openly with those real people around you? Maybe telling that story would change your life, or the life of someone you’ve not yet met. That’s what I want to find out.

Your past experiences, she’d explained, are the foundations on which you build your future. Build them on pride, not shame. Denying your history leaves your house standing on sand, always in danger of collapsing.

Her latest editor had scheduled a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree appraisal, which sounded altogether too intimate. At her age (fifty-seven), one didn’t like to be appraised too closely, and certainly not from every angle.

Perhaps the compulsion to fill every inch of space was because it made him feel less alone, or because every single object was imbued with memories of happier times, and the objects had proven more reliable than the people.

Monica, I read something on Instagram the other day. It said, Mother is a verb, not a noun. I think it means there are many ways to mother without actually being one. Look at you and your café. You nurture loads of people, every day.

All these things, all these memories, they’re just suffocating you, keeping you stuck in the past. You have new friends now, and home is wherever they are. You could buy a new flat and start afresh. Imagine that,’ she said, staring at him intently.

The strange thing about reaching your fifties is that, although your outsides might be gradually falling apart, on the inside you don’t feel any different from the way you did in your twenties. I still don’t feel like a “proper adult,” and I don’t expect that I will at seventy, either.

Iona found herself at a loss as to the required etiquette. Her recent exchanges with Piers had served only as salutary reminders that engaging with strangers on the train was not a good idea at all. That’s why there was an unwritten law against it. But she and Sanjay had shared a moment. They were joined together, like it or not, by a brush with death. So, what were the rules now? God, it was difficult being British sometimes

Monica opened her kitchen cupboard, which was embarrassingly bare. “I’ve got some cooking chocolate, if you’d like some,” she said, breaking off a square and putting it in her mouth, feeling her energy returning with the infusion of sweetness. Now the tension had dropped she realized how hungry and exhausted she was. “Monica, stop!” said Riley. “You can’t eat that. It’s poisonous.” “What on earth are you talking about?” asked Monica, her mouth full of chocolate. “Cooking chocolate. It’s poisonous until it’s cooked.” “Riley, did your mother tell you that when you were little?” “Yes!” he replied. She watched the penny drop. “She lied to me, didn’t she? To stop me stealing the chocolate.” “That’s one of the things I love so much about you. You always assume that people are good and telling the truth, because that’s how you are. You always think that things will turn out well and, because of that, they generally do. By the way, did she tell you that when the ice-cream van played music it meant they’d run out of ice cream?” “Yes, she did actually,” he replied. “I do have a dark side, you know. Everybody thinks I’m so bloody nice, but I have as many evil thoughts as the next man. Honestly.” “No, you don’t, Riley,” she said, sitting down next to him on the sofa. “There’s so much I love about you,” she said, passing him a few squares of chocolate, “but I don’t love you.

Day) and had finished them both in record time, while scrolling through all her social media and thinking, darkly,

Alice new she should move on, but her feet were welded to the ground.

Why was it that men with grey hair and wrinkles achieved gravitas, whereas well-preserved women like herself became

They’ll grow up less spoiled and entitled.

Mature? Good grief! I'm not a cheese. Or a herbaceous border.

Hazard held his hand out from the back of the taxi, helping Monica to climb in. In that gesture, Monica realized, was everything she wanted in life.

Meet force with softness. Recipe for life. Now you understand.” And, strangely, he did.

Sanjay would have chosen an emerald for Emmie, to go with her eyes.

He’d tried to cajole her out of her office space with sweet talk of an extra hour in bed and more flexibility, and, when that didn’t work, had attempted to drive her out by making her do something awful called hot desking, which—she learned—was corporate speak for sharing

It’s been scientifically proven that when we receive a compliment, our brains are flooded with serotonin, which is an amazing (free, legal and harmless) drug.

I am a little miffed, however, that my proposed team name ‘The Big Fact Hunt’ has been vetoed.

He’d tried the first chapter in desperation yesterday, but it had made his eyeballs bleed.

women of a certain age’ just want to be seen, heard, made to feel like we matter. We need to know that we’re not irrelevant or surplus to requirements,

No woman is anyone’s ‘other half.’ We are all entire people. Completely whole, and totally unique.

They’d just skate over the surface of the getting-to-know-each-other thing, and then they’d be gone. All these constant new beginnings, without any middles or satisfactory endings, were exhausting.

Monica, why does everything have to have a point? Why does it all have to be part of a plan? Sometimes it’s best to let things just grow naturally, like wildflowers.

I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.

It was quite clear to Hazard that he couldn't just slot into his old life again. He was a different shape now, and he didn't fit.

Hey, Fin," he said to the small, skinny boy helping him stack the tools in the shed, "are you any good with girls?" "Me? I'm the best!" said Fin, puffing out his chest. "I have FIVE girlfriends. That's even more than Leo. And he has a PlayStation 4." "Wow. What's your secret? How do you let them know you really like them?" "That's easy. I give them one of my Haribos. And you know what I do if I really, really like them?" "What?" asked Hazard, leaning down to Fin's height. Fin whispered, his breath hot in Hazard's ear, "I give them the one shaped like a heart.

Riley felt like he had joined the ranks of romantic heroes who would do anything to win their fair princess. He was Mr. Darcy, he was Rhett Butler, he was Shrek. Maybe not Shrek.

I had reverse metamorphosed from a butterfly into a caterpillar.

THE ADVANTAGE OF BOARDING the train at Hampton Court was that it was the end of the line, or the beginning, depending, of course, on which way you were traveling. There was a life lesson there, thought Iona. In her experience, most endings turned out to be beginnings in disguise.

Thames, the Palace, and Bushy Park.

See the group—no, the “cackle”—of hyenas

Hampton Court maze!

Was the only one holding her breath as they waited for the door to open? The