Quotes from Susan Juby

In the future if my mother tries to shame me with her disapproval, I will let her know in no uncertain terms that I reject her and all of her codependent baggage. I am Codependent No More.

If the facts don't fit your theory, just find some new facts.

My heart kind of hurt when I looked at her. Not because I was in love, but because I could tell from looking at her that she didn't hate herself. Not only didn't she seem to hate herself, she barely seemed to think about herself. How fucking glorious must that be?

I think we learn the truth about ourselves by telling it to someone else.

If you are alive and conscious, you are probably codependent.

Maybe careers aren't something you can really plan for. They just sort of happen, like brown eyes or flat feet. I took one of those career aptitude tests last year, and it showed that I should be a flight attendant or a seamstress. Not a fashion designer or anything, mind you, but a sweatshop worker. Apparently stewardesses and sweatshop workers and I enjoy a lot of the same interests and activities.

This bastard was in a self-help program? For what? Square-jawed, cleft-chin sufferers? Handsome Bastards Anonymous?

I think MacGregor might be a genius. Anyone so oblivious to the horror of the human world must be.

I am not a people person.

Can you dance? Of course, I said, even though I can't really. I think enthusiasm counts for a lot in dancing and in life.

I've always wanted to be self-sustaining and able to grow my own food. All I lack is land and skill.

I had this vision of the two of us holding hands or getting into some light petting behind shower curtains or up in the fencing aisle or some shit.

The old man kept going about how he could never keep her home, how she loved to roam. He said she should have been a sheep in the foothills of Scotland. Now if that wasn't a load of shit I don't know what is. I'll tell you why that sheep roamed. The fences around here was held up with goddamn binder twine and half-assed prayers. That's why.

It's not a good idea to let on about extreme happy feelings. People get ideas.

I may never recover. It was like an out-of-body experience. I'm an alien trying on human rituals.

If you start looking up, they start asking questions.

Not being a big one for having friends, I had no idea what I was going to do with Aubrey, you know, to entertain him.

Well, at least I can spare myself the ordeal of a whole battery of personality tests. My personality is poor; that much is clear.

She is, like anyone worth knowing, many things at once.

People never like to talk about their slower relatives. I got a cousin, twice removed, got webs between his toes, ain't said one word his whole life. You never hear about him in the family newsletter that goes around every Christmas. Hell, nobody mentions me, either, if it comes to that. Families is funny about who they advertise.

It's important to give people the benefit of the doubt even if they don't deserve it.

I'm starting to think that pure truth is impossible, and that all narrators and all people are at least a little unreliable.

When you tell a story, you shape the truth.

It must be amazing to end each day consumed with something other than disappointment at yourself and the world.