Mary Schmich famous quotes

Don't waste your time on jealousy...
-- Mary Schmich

#Waste

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life…the most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t.
-- Mary Schmich

#Years #Interesting #People

Reading is a discount ticket to everywhere.
-- Mary Schmich

#Reading #Tickets #Discounts

You can map your life through your favorite movies, and no two people's maps will be the same.
-- Mary Schmich

#Movie #Two #People

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.
-- Mary Schmich

#Dance #Rooms #Living Room

Good art is art that allows you to enter it from a variety of angles and to emerge with a variety of views.
-- Mary Schmich

#Art #Views #Angle

The movies we love and admire are to some extent a function of who we are when we see them.
-- Mary Schmich

#Movie #Who We Are #Function

Like many women my age, I am 28 years old.
-- Mary Schmich

#Birthday #Years #Age

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. The older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.
-- Mary Schmich

#Friendship #People #Friends Come And Go

Unusual commencement advice: Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '97: Wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it.
-- Mary Schmich

#Class #Advice #Gentleman

Linda Tripp has shown that a true friend is an archivist, a biographer.
-- Mary Schmich

#True Friend #Archivists #True Friend Is

Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary…what ever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either – your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s.
-- Mary Schmich

#Children #Divorce #Wedding Anniversary

You can figure out who you were by which movies you loved when
-- Mary Schmich

#Figures

TV happens. And once it's happened, it's gone. When it's gone, you move on, no tears, no tantrums, no videotape
-- Mary Schmich

#Moving #Tears #Tantrums

I couldn't have foreseen all the good things that have followed my mother's death. The renewed energy, the surprising sweetness of grief. The tenderness I feel for strangers on walkers. The deeper love I have for my siblings and friends. The desire to play the mandolin. The gift of a visitation.
-- Mary Schmich

#Mother #Sibling #Grief

Don't waste time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind.
-- Mary Schmich

#Jealousy #Waste #Wasting Time

Worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum.
-- Mary Schmich

#Worry #Trying #Gum

The first gay person I ever met was surely not the first gay person I ever met.
-- Mary Schmich

#Gay #Firsts #Mets

One thing you might want to learn before you attend the world's largest ukulele lesson is how to say ukulele.
-- Mary Schmich

#Ukulele #Want #Might

Chicago is constantly auditioning for the world, determined that one day, on the streets of Barcelona, in Berlin's cabarets, in the coffee shops of Istanbul, people will know and love us in our multidimensional glory, dream of us the way they dream of San Francisco and New York.
-- Mary Schmich

#Dream #New York #Coffee

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.
-- Mary Schmich

#Succeed #Remember #Insult

The Hunger Games' isn't for everybody. But neither is 'Anna Karenina.
-- Mary Schmich

#Games #Hunger #Anna

Be nice to your siblings. They are your link to the past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.
-- Mary Schmich

#Family #Sibling #Nice

Get to know your parents, you never know when they'll be gone for good.
-- Mary Schmich

#Family #Parent #Gone

Be kind to your knees, you’ll miss them when they’re gone.
-- Mary Schmich

#Missing #Be Kind #Gone

Do one thing every day that scares you...Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own...Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.
-- Mary Schmich

#Past #Thinking #Fishing

Do not read beauty magazines. They only make you feel ugly.
-- Mary Schmich

#Magazines #Ugly #Feels

Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.
-- Mary Schmich

#Real #Worry #Tuesday

Accept certain inalienable truths, prices will rise, politicians will philander, you too will get old, and when you do you'll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.
-- Mary Schmich

#Children #Noble #Politician

Families are ecosystems. Each life grows in response to the lives around it
-- Mary Schmich

#Ecosystems #Grows #Response

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft
-- Mary Schmich

#New York #Cities #California

In twenty years you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked.
-- Mary Schmich

#Photography #Years #Looks

Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's.
-- Mary Schmich

#Choices #Half #Too Much

On an average day, we allow ourselves the fiction that we own a piece of our workplace. That's part of what it takes to get the job done. Deeper down, we know it's all on loan.
-- Mary Schmich

#Jobs #Average #Fiction

Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you'll have a trust fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either of them might run out.
-- Mary Schmich

#Running #Support #Might

A line from one of my 1997 columns - 'Do one thing every day that scares you' - is now widely attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, though I have yet to see any evidence that she ever said it and I don't believe she did. She said some things about fear, but not that thing.
-- Mary Schmich

#Believe #Scare #Lines

Opening day. All you have to do is say the words and you feel the shutters thrown wide, the room air out, the light pour in. In baseball, no other day is so pure with possibility. No scores yet, no losses, no blame or disappointment. No hangover, at least until the game's over.
-- Mary Schmich

#Baseball #Disappointment #Hangover

For some Chicago expats, food is the medicine that blunts the pain of separation.
-- Mary Schmich

#Pain #Medicine #Chicago

Every day each of us wakes up, reaches into drawers and closets, pulls out a costume for the day and proceeds to dress in a style that can only be called preposterous.
-- Mary Schmich

#Style #Costumes #Dresses

Here's a thing about the death of your mother, or anyone else you love: You can't anticipate how you'll feel afterward. People will tell you; a few may be close to right, none exactly right.
-- Mary Schmich

#Mother #Love You #People

Advice, like youth, probably wasted on the young
-- Mary Schmich

#Advice #Youth #Like You