The Unspeakable Quotes

“Life is mostly an exercise in being something other than what we used to be while remaining fundamentally — and sometimes maddeningly — who we are.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“To have an old dog is to look into the eyes of the sweetest soul you know and see traces of the early light of the worst day of your life.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“Listen,” Older Self might say. “The things that right now seem permanently out of reach, you’ll reach them eventually. You’ll have a career, a house, a partner in life. You will have much better shoes. You will reach a point where your funds will generally be sufficient—maybe not always plentiful, but sufficient.” But here’s what Older Self will not have the heart to say: some of the music you are now listening to—the CDs you play while you stare out the window and think about the five million different ways your life might go—will be unbearable to listen to in twenty years. They will be unbearable not because they will sound dated and trite but because they will sound like the lining of your soul. They will take you straight back to the place you were in when you felt that anything could happen at any time, that your life was a huge room with a thousand doors, that your future was not only infinite but also elastic. They will be unbearable because they will remind you that at least half of the things you once planned for your future are now in the past and others got reabsorbed into your imagination before you could even think about acting on them. It will be as though you’d never thought of them in the first place, as if they were never meant to be anything more than passing thoughts you had while playing your stereo at night.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“In the history of the world, a whole story has never been told.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“My goal in life is to be content. By that I don't mean "fine" or "basically satisfied." I don't mean settling. I mean, for last of better terms, feeling like I'm in the right life.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“The idea of loving someone no matter what they do is overrated, not to mention largely impossible.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“I am not and will never again be a young writer, a young homeowner, a young teacher. I was never a young wife. The only thing I could do now for which my youth would be a truly notable feature would be to die. If I died now, I’d die young. Everything else, I’m doing middle-aged.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“For my mother’s entire life, her mother was less a mother than splintered bits of shrapnel she carried around in her body, sharp, rusty debris that threatened to puncture an organ if she turned a certain way.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“I can tell you that the comfort zone has many upsides. It may be associated with sloth and cowardice and any number of paralyzing, irrational phobias. It may be a dark abyss where misunderstood people lie around in fading recliners listening to outdated music. But I’m convinced that, when handled responsibly, the comfort zone can be as useful and productive as a well-oiled industrial zone. I am convinced that excellence comes not from overcoming limitations but from embracing them. At least that’s what I’d say if I were delivering a TED Talk. I’d never say such a douchy thing in private conversation.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“It would be about one of life's most reliable disappointments, which is that your audience, no matter how small, is always bigger than those who actually understand what you're saying.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“It is why I hope that if I make it to eighty-something I have the good sense not to pull out those old CDs. My heart, by then, surely would not be able to keep from imploding. My heart, back then, stayed in one piece only because, as bursting with anticipation as it was, it had not yet been strained by nostalgia. It had not yet figured out that life is mostly an exercise in being something other than what we used to be while remaining fundamentally - and sometimes maddeningly - who we are.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“My heart, back then, stayed in one piece only because, as bursting with anticipation as it was, it had not yet been strained by nostalgia. It had not yet figured out that life is mostly an exercise in being something other than what we used to be while remaining fundamentally - and sometimes maddeningly - who we are.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“What I miss is the feeling that nothing has started yet, that the future towers over the past, that the present is merely a planning phase for the gleaming architecture that will make up the skyline of the rest of my life. But what I forget is the loneliness of all that. If everything is ahead then nothing is behind. You have no ballast. You have no tailwinds either. You hardly ever know what to do, because you’ve hardly done anything. I guess this is why wisdom is supposed to be the consolation prize of aging. It’s supposed to give us better things to do than stand around and watch in disbelief as the past casts long shadows over the future. The problem, I now know, is that no one ever really feels wise, least of all those who actually have it in themselves to be so. The Older Self of our imagination never quite folds itself into the older self we actually become. Instead, it hovers in the perpetual distance like a highway mirage. It’s the destination that never gets any closer even as our life histories pile up behind us in the rearview mirror. It is the reason that I got to forty-something without ever feeling thirty-something. It is why I hope that if I make it to eighty-something I have the good sense not to pull out those old CDs. My heart, by then, surely would not be able to keep from imploding. My heart, back then, stayed in one piece only because, as bursting with anticipation as it was, it had not yet been strained by nostalgia. It had not yet figured out that life is mostly an exercise in being something other than what we used to be while remaining fundamentally—and sometimes maddeningly—who we are.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“No matter where they are or who they’re with, dogs are incapable of being anything but themselves. Show me a dog that puts on airs or laughs politely at an unfunny joke and I’ll show you a human in a dog costume, possibly one owned and licensed by the Walt Disney Company.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“Cooking fills me with a dread I can only describe as the sum total of every negative feeling I’ve ever had about myself. It takes my chronic impatience, divides it by my inherent laziness, and multiplies it to the power of my deepest self-loathing.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“life is mostly an exercise in being something other than what we used to be”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“Nothing ever begins when you think it does. You think you can trace something back to its roots but roots by definition never end. There’s always something that came before: soil and water and seeds that were born of trees that were born of yet more seeds.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“Now, however, I realize that Joni didn’t shape my approach to language as much as my approach to my own emotions. She taught me the power of not taking things personally. She taught me that feelings can be separated from the self, that they can undock from our psyches and hurtle their way to the outer reaches of the atmosphere, where they can transmit not just our own aches and agonies but also the collective invisible passions of, if not all of humanity, at least a whole bunch of people besides ourselves.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“Anthropologie is not butch, phantom or otherwise. It is Disney with a slightly more sophisticated but no less carefully engineered aesthetic. It is to adult women what princesses are to little girls. It is a twirling motion in the form of an international brand.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“Depending on their size and temperament, they were—and are—capable of delivering a joy I rarely accessed elsewhere. The mere sight of a doe-eyed golden retriever puppy or a massive, Sphinx-like Leonberger can temporarily alter my brain chemistry. To encounter a Great Pyrenees or a malamute feels to me like meeting a unicorn. That such creatures roam in our midst seems nothing short of magical. That such creatures might share our beds or lie on the sofa with us while we watch TV seems like proof that heaven is capable of dipping down and grazing the earth with the tip of its toe.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“your ability to see is sometimes only as good as your willingness to go unseen.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“But here's what Older Self will not have the heart to say: some of the music you are now listening to - the CDs you play while you stare out the window and think about the five million different ways your life might go - will be unbearable to listen to in twenty years. They will be unbearable not because they will sound dated and trite but because they will sound like the lining of your soul. They will take you straight back to the place you were in when you felt that anything could happen at any time, that your life was a huge room with a thousand doors, that your future was not only infinite but also elastic. They will be unbearable because they will remind you that at least half of the things you once planned for your future are now in the past and others got reabsorbed into your imagination before you could even think about acting on them. It will be as though you'd never thought of them in the first place, as if they were never meant to be anything more than passing thoughts you had while playing your stereo at night.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“It's amazing what the living expect of the dying. We expect wisdom, insight, burst of clarity that are then reported back to the undying in the urgent staccato of a telegram. We expect them to reminisce over photos, to accept apologies and to make them, to be sad, to be angry, to be grateful. We expect them to clear our consciences, to confirm our fantasies. We expect them to get excited about the idea of being a bird.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“I think you're the first person to ever call me a romantic," I told him.
"Well, you're certainly not practical," he said.
I paused for a moment. He had not said this unkindly.
"I guess I was talking about living authentically," I said.
"But isn't that the same as living romantically?”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“while remaining fundamentally—and sometimes maddeningly—who we are.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“When I was a teenager, her habit of cramming a bunch of words into one line, plus the way her lyrics tend to start with small particularities and ripple outward into universal truths, lodged itself into my ears and wound up directly on my pages.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“I rode in my own backseat as we headed northwest toward Hollywood on the 101 freeway and then exited onto the dark, scabrous streets of the then still-a-little-funky, still-gentrifying neighborhood where we both lived because we were single and “creative” and this was where single, creative people lived if they wanted to surround themselves with—and potentially date and possibly marry—like-minded folk.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“or furniture I wanted to buy or even people I was attracted to (well, I’m referring to those things a little) but, rather, a sensation I can only describe as the ache of not being there”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“But here’s what Older Self will not have the heart to say: some of the music you are now listening to—the CDs you play while you stare out the window and think about the five million different ways your life might go—will be unbearable to listen to in twenty years. They will be unbearable not because they will sound dated and trite but because they will sound like the lining of your soul. They will take you straight back to the place you were in when you felt that anything could happen at any time, that your life was a huge room with a thousand doors, that your future was not only infinite but also elastic. They will be unbearable because they will remind you that at least half of the things you once planned for your future are now in the past and others got reabsorbed into your imagination before you could even think about acting on them. It will be as though you’d never thought of them in the first place, as if they were never”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“In certain moments—driving on the 405 freeway through the brown, flower-flecked hills of the Sepulveda Pass; preparing to dive into the ginlike waters of the pool at the Rosebowl Aquatic Center, where the San Gabriel Valley heat roils off the concrete and my skin gets too tan and my hair bleaches out and some part of me morphs back into the sun-dried child I was in the very beginning—I have to ask myself why it all feels so familiar. Is it a sign that I have truly transformed, that I have become not just a Californian but, in a general sense, Californian? Or is it simply a resetting of the bones of the Californian I’ve always been?”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion