Mary Schmich Quotes

Don't waste your time on jealousy.

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.

Reading is a discount ticket to everywhere.

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.

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your 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.

The secret to happiness, at Thanksgiving or any time, is to find pleasure in imperfection.

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

Do one thing every day that scares you. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Don't waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long, and in the end, it's only with yourself. Remember compliments you receive, forget the insults; if you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

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

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

Replace the words "have to" with "get to" and watch how the cold rain on your life changes to sunshine.

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.

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

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.

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

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