Corrigan Quotes & Sayings

You are what you eat and read. — Maya Corrigan

I didn't know adults could be changed. I thought they were finished pieces, baked through and kiln dried. — Kelly Corrigan

According to a Wall Street Journal article some 59 percent of Americans don t own a single book. Not a cookbook or even the Bible. — Maureen Corrigan

To read Helen Macdonald's memoir, H Is for Hawk, is to feel as though Emily Bronte just turned up at your door, trailing all the windy, feral outdoors into your living room. — Maureen Corrigan

I had thought a good mother would not elicit such comments, but now I see that a good mother is required to somehow absorb all this ugliness and find a way to fall back in love with her child the next day. — Kelly Corrigan

Mothering you is the first thing of consequence I have ever done. — Kelly Corrigan

I almost threw up the first time I set foot inside the University of California, San Francisco's Comprehensive Care Center and joined the stream of thin, slow-moving, low-voiced, gray-skinned people. I didn't want to be one of the pitied, the struck-down. — Kelly Corrigan

It is one thing to be a man's wife - quite another to be the mother of his children. In fact, once you become a mother, being a wife seems like a game you once played or a self-help book you were overly impressed with as a teenager that on second reading is puffy with common ideas. This was one of the many things I had learned since crossing over into the middle place - that sliver of time when childhood and parenthood overlap. — Kelly Corrigan

It's a gift of tranquility when your adult desires mesh with your childhood background. I don't quite know why mine didn't, although I think books, again, are partly to blame. — Maureen Corrigan

You have to speak your dream out loud. — Kelly Corrigan

I'm becoming the Fuhrer - the Fuhrer of Laughs! — Mark Corrigan

Self-stigma refers to the state in which a person with mental illness has come to internalize the negative attitudes about mental illness and turns them against him- or herself. — Patrick W. Corrigan

It's easy to love kids who make you feel competent. — Kelly Corrigan

By 1929, one out of every five Americans had a car (as opposed to one out of thirty-seven Englishmen, one out of forty Frenchmen, and one out of forty-eight Germans). — Maureen Corrigan

Frosties are just Cornflakes for people who can't face reality. — Mark Corrigan

I think, consciously or not, what we readers do each time we open a book is to set off a search for authenticity. We want to get closer to the heart of things, and sometimes even a few good sentences contained in an otherwise unexceptional book can crystallize vague feelings, fleeting physical sensations, or, sometimes, profound epiphanies. pg. xvi — Maureen Corrigan

I have to pick up my kids. I have to register them for school. I have to pack their lunches and get their Hep B shots and wash their hands. They must be spotted on the stairs and potty trained and broken of the binkie. And if that relentless work runs right alongside gauging the risks of bladder surgery on a seventy-four-year-old, well, what did you think was gonna happen? What did you think being an adult was? — Kelly Corrigan

I am your mother. The first mile of your road. Me, and all of my obvious and hidden limitations. That means that in addition to possibly wrecking you, I have the chance to give you what was given to me. A decent childhood. More good memories than bad. Some values. A sense of tribe. A run at happiness. — Kelly Corrigan

I shift my position on the sofa, so my head is on a big, lumpy pillow in Greenie's lap and Georgia is leanign back against my middle and Claire is just about asleep on the floor. Allison and I catch eyes, and she tilts her head and smiles, and when I smile back, we both well up with tears, I think beause we both recognize that whatever else may be unfolding, this is happiness. — Kelly Corrigan

My readers often say to me, 'If we lived next door to each other, we'd be best friends.' That is precisely what I wanted to say to smart, funny, self-effacing Ellen McCarthy after I finished reading The Real Thing. I loved every lesson laid out in a book that wouldn't dare to call itself a field guide to marriage but amounts to as much on every page. This is a deeply useful little book. — Kelly Corrigan

One great hope lies in the fact that there is a new consciousness in our World, particularly among young people. — Mairead Corrigan

My students should be afraid: choosing what kind of work you'll do to a great extent means choosing who you'll be. — Maureen Corrigan

This tug-of-war often obscures what's also happening between us. I am your mother, the first mile of your road. Me and all my obvious and hidden limitations. That means that in addition to possibly wrecking you, I have the chance to give to you what was given to me: a decent childhood, more good memories than bad, some values, a sense of tribe, a run at happiness. You can't imagine how seriously I take that - even as I fail you. Mothering you is the first thing of consequence that I have ever done. — Kelly Corrigan

Pulling at the hem of my emotion was the creeping sense that it might well take until 2036 for this child in my arms to feel a fraction of what I already felt for her. — Kelly Corrigan

If John Lennon was right that life is what happens when you're making other plans, parenthood is what happens when everything is flipped over and spilling everywhere and you can't find a towel or a sponge or your "inside" voice. — Kelly Corrigan

I moved from Philadelphia to California when I was 25, after traveling abroad for a year. I thought I'd come home eventually and settle down, but I didn't. — Kelly Corrigan

The primary driver to pathological dissociation is attachment disorganization in early life: when that is followed by severe and repeated trauma, then a major disorder of structural dissociation is created (Lyons-Ruth, Dutra, Schuder, & Bianchi, 2006). — Frank M. Corrigan

Reading, my earliest refuge in the unknown world, made me want to venture into it. — Maureen Corrigan

Readers, professional or casual, are alert to passages in a book that illuminate what was previously shadowy and formless. — Maureen Corrigan

We need radical thinking, creative ideas, and imagination. — Mairead Corrigan

In our daily lives, where we're bombarded by the fake and the trivial, reading serves as a way to stop, shut out the noise of the world, and try to grab hold of something real, no matter how small. — Maureen Corrigan

Corrigan crept up to the bar, cautiously moving around it. It looked like he was copying all the moves he'd seen in old cop movies and westerns, and doing it rather badly. He lowered the pistol. There was no one behind the bar. There was however, an open trapdoor. And that would mean the bounty hunter was - .
"Don't move!" Came Beck's distant, slightly muffled, barked order. "My turn, I think! — Christina Engela

I realized that making people feel irreplaceable was his gift. — Kelly Corrigan

The mother is the most essential piece on the board, the one you must protect. Only she has the range. Only she can move in multiple directions. Once she's gone, it's a whole different game. — Kelly Corrigan

Reality TV, blogging and self-publishing are all evidence of a society's or culture's desire to be more public. And that's a sign of a healthy or energetic culture. — Maureen Corrigan

Our common humanity is more important than all the things that divide us. — Mairead Corrigan

Or maybe, knowing that intercourse involved certain unsavory sights, smells, and sounds, God deliberately left the ingredients for alcohol lying around where man would undoubtedly find them. — Kelly Corrigan

The truth is, I'd like to be closer to my kids. I'd like to share more with them. But that's not what this time in their lives is about. This is their time to separate, to self-direct, to become independent. — Kelly Corrigan

That to fly requires chaotic, sometimes even violent passages
becomes a metaphor for all of life's most meaningful endeavors. — Kelly Corrigan

Prolonged travel in the alternate world of books can also make a reader more prone to fantasy thinking and estranged from his or her "real" life. — Maureen Corrigan

The only mothers who never embarrass, harass, dismiss, discount, deceive, distort, neglect, baffle, appall, inhibit, incite, insult, or age poorly are dead mothers, perfectly contained in photographs, pressed into two dimensions like a golden autumn leaf. — Kelly Corrigan

For one to achieve success, one other must fail. — Brett Corrigan

(Motherhood) I want her to have this thing I have that's so ordinary and tedious and aggravating, and then, so divine. — Kelly Corrigan

When I was working on 'Big Fan,' I didn't really feel like any lines needed to be changed or enhanced or expanded upon in any way. I thought it was a solid script. All you had to do was what it said. — Kevin Corrigan

It's not that I don't like people. It's just that when I'm in the company of others - even my nearest and dearest - there always comes a moment when I'd rather be reading a book. — Maureen Corrigan

Jeremy, there are many things I would do to help you, but digging a hole in the wintry earth with my bare hands so that you can bury the corpse of a dog you've killed is not one of them. — Mark Corrigan

Cancer is a growth hormone for empathy, and empathy makes us useful to each other in ways we were not, could not have been, before. — Kelly Corrigan

Brown for first course, white for pudding. Brown's savoury, white's the treat. Of course I'm the one who's laughing because I actually love brown toast. — Mark Corrigan

I think the influence of books is neither direct and more predictable. Books themselves are too unruly, and so are readers. — Maureen Corrigan

There's no such things as travel insurance when it comes to reading. — Maureen Corrigan

But the smell of the hospital, the sting of those overhead lights in the night, the snippets of conversations I had overheard, stayed with me and marked the beginning of how I came to know what a bold and dangerous thing parenthood is. Risk was not an event we had survived, but the place where we now lived. — Kelly Corrigan

Raising people is not some lark. It's serious work with serious repercussions. It's air-traffic control. You can't step out for a minute; you can barely pause to scratch your ankle. — Kelly Corrigan

Constant reading pulled me away from the world of my childhood, the world of my parents. — Maureen Corrigan

It's okay to be scared, but fear is different. Fear is when we let being scared prevent us from doing what love requires of us. — Mairead Corrigan

Jeffrey Makala, the friendly and astute rare-books and special collections librarian who will be my guide, confirms my opinion that librarians, along with independent-bookstore owners and dedicated middle- and high-school teachers, are the most selfless guardians of literature on earth. — Maureen Corrigan

Do you know that I love you enough to take in the full reality of your lives? That I can understand the things you think I can't and I can see and know and embrace every bit of you, full frame, no cropping? — Kelly Corrigan

My dad did a load a day, folding it in front of whatever Eagles, Flyers, or 76ers game was on TV. — Kelly Corrigan

I was always acting primarily with shareholder interests in mind.
It's also true I've always had a fairly moralistic attitude to business, and would not do anything that I considered improper.
As a consequence, I have occasionally pursued issues during my career that other people might have avoided. — Chris Corrigan

As kids, we were taught to be the psychological equivalent of Navy SEALS- an elite parochial-school unit, drilled to take life's blows on the chin without wincing. — Maureen Corrigan

I support this proposal and agree with this great and important initiative to abolish militarism and war. I will continue to speak out for an end to the institution of militarism and war and for institutions built on international law and human rights and nonviolent conflict resolution. — Mairead Corrigan

But given everything I do know, no matter how hard it is, how lonely or stressful, still, I would not want to leave this earth without being a mother. — Kelly Corrigan

We can rejoice and celebrate today because we are living in a miraculous time. Everything is changing and everything is possible. — Mairead Corrigan

[Her] idea of a fair trade--her lentils for your caviar. — Maya Corrigan

I miss that world from the safe distance of memory. — Maureen Corrigan

All of the disparate books on my list contain characters, scenes or voices that linger long past the last page of their stories. — Maureen Corrigan

I'm a firm believer that to really understand a business takes years, not months. As an investment analyst you think you understand a business from the outside, but the reality is that, once you are inside, you can go on learning for five or ten years. — Chris Corrigan

My own mother, who's always dazzled by my faculty and answering questions in the literature a category on Jeopardy whenever we watch it together, keeps urging me to try to get on the show to make all those years spent reading finally pay off. Leave me alone I'm reading — Maureen Corrigan

Knocking back the wine and reaching for the cheap consolations of kimchee-scented Kleenex fiction — Maureen Corrigan

I think the most important CEO task is defining the course that the business will take over the next five or so years. You have to have the ability to see what the business environment might be like a long way out, not just over the coming months. You need to be able to both set a broad direction, and also to take particular decisions along the way that make that broad direction unfold correctly. — Chris Corrigan

When you are in pain, and you see someone else in pain, there is really nothing as satisfying as giving them comfort in the night. — Kelly Corrigan

I snap and storm around and then spend long nights thinking of the most damaged adults I know and wondering if my particular brand of maternal fuckups are how they ended up like that. — Kelly Corrigan

At first parenthood was as I had expected, exhausting, sometimes heinous, and occasionally divine. I held my children close enough to feel them breathe, laugh, swallow. — Kelly Corrigan

He loved me the way only a nineteen-year old can- suddenly and deliriously. — Kelly Corrigan

Love is not jealous. — Brian Jay Corrigan

I believe that hope for the future depends on each of us taking nonviolence into our hearts and minds and developing new and imaginative structures which are nonviolent and life-giving for all. — Mairead Corrigan

This life we endure - how strange, yet how jolly — Chris Ware

I'd always had a childhood ambition to go into the investment capital business, and spent twenty-odd years in it. But the thought of spending the second half of my career in the same business was boring, so I looked around for other opportunities . — Chris Corrigan

Appreciation is the purest,strongest form of love. It is the outward-bound kind of love that asks for nothing and gives everything. — Kelly Corrigan

And it occurs to me that maybe the reason my mother was so exhausted all the time wasn't because she was doing so much but because she was feeling so much. — Kelly Corrigan

Like a lot of other bashful introverts, I discovered that I like teaching a lot because it's like acting. When I stepped into the classroom, I stepped into a role, one that allowed me to forget myself. — Maureen Corrigan

I think Virgin Blue is still a very promising and exciting business.
Now, I know that's not a view that's widely held in the market but I think the market is simply throwing it into the too-hard basket at the present time because of the oil price events.
But we think it is still a very exciting business. — Chris Corrigan

Our father came to sleep in our house that night. He carried a small suitcase with a black mourning suit and a pair of polished shoes. Corrigan stopped him as he made his way up the stairs. 'Where d'you think you're going?'Our father gripped the bannister. His hands were liverspotted and I could see him trembling in his pause. 'That's not your room,' sad Corrigan. Our father tottered on the stairs. He took another step up. 'Don't,' said my brother. His voice was clear, full, confidant. Our father stood stunned. He climbed one more step and then turned, descended, looked around, lost.
'My own sons,' he said.
We made a bed for him on a sofa in the living room, but even then Corrigan refused to stay under the same roof; he went walking in the direction of the city center and I wondered what alley he might be found in later that night, what fist he might walk into, whose bottle he might climb down inside. — Colum McCann

We reject the way the world is at the moment and we don't accept nuclear weapons — Mairead Corrigan

She'd have to treat the interview more like risotto than instant rice, adding ingredients gradually while stirring gently. — Maya Corrigan

You fly from thermal to thermal looking for lift. — Kelly Corrigan

I believe, with Gandhi, that we need to take an imaginative leap forward toward fresh and generous idealism for the sake of all humanity - that we neeed to renew this ancient wisdom of nonviolence, to strive for a disarmed world, and to create a culture of nonviolence. — Mairead Corrigan

What we readers do each time we open a book is to set up on a search for authenticity. We want to get closer to the heart of things, and sometimes even a few good sentences contained in an otherwise unexceptional book can crystallize vague feelings, fleeting physical sensations, or, sometimes, profound epiphanies. — Maureen Corrigan

How seriously can I take myself? I'm just one of six billion people, right? — Kelly Corrigan

great mysteries that the Poles have been able to keep their language, culture and religion alive despite inhabiting an area which has usually belonged to either Germany, Russia or Austria, or sometimes to all three. — Gordon Corrigan

Given the consumer-pleasing politics of today's universities, I have, in effect, seventy new bosses each semester; they're sitting at the desk in front of me. — Maureen Corrigan

Even when all the paperwork-a marriage license, a notarized deed, two birth certificates, and seven years of tax returns-clearly indicates you're an adult, but all the same, there you are, clutching the phone and thanking God that you're still somebody's daughter. — Kelly Corrigan

Hitler promised not to invade Czechoslovakia, Jeremy. Welcome to the real world. — Mark Corrigan

What Corrigan wanted was a fully believable God, one you could find
in the grime of the everyday ... he consoled himself with the fact that, in the real world, when he looked closely into the darkness he might find the presence of a light, damaged and bruised, but a little light all the same. He wanted, quite simply, for the world to be a better place, and he was in the habit of hoping for it. — Colum McCann

Corrigan told me once that Christ was quite easy to understand. He
went where He was supposed to go. He stayed where He was needed. He
took little or nothing along, a pair of sandals, a bit of a shirt, a few odds and ends to stave off the loneliness. He never rejected the world. If He had rejected it, He would have been rejecting mystery. And if He rejected mystery, He would have been rejecting faith. — Colum McCann

Generations of readers, bored with their own alienating, repetitious jobs, have been mesmerized by Crusoe's essential, civilization-building chores. — Maureen Corrigan

To enable consensus politics to develop we need to empower people where they live. This means devolving financial resources and political power down to the community level. One of the greatest blocks to movement is fear. This fear can only be removed when people feel their voices are being heard by government and when they have a say in their own lives and communities. — Mairead Corrigan

Inspiration can come from anywhere. But I do love actors. I wish I could drop a bunch of names, but there are just too many. — Kevin Corrigan

A hilarious academic novel that'll send you laughing (albeit ruefully) back into the trenches of the classroom ... [A] mordant minor masterpiece ... Like the best works of farce, academic or otherwise, Dear Committee Members deftly mixes comedy with social criticism and righteous outrage. By the end, you may well find yourself laughing so hard it hurts. — Maureen Corrigan

But now I see there's no such thing as "a" woman, "one" woman. There are dozens inside every one of them. I probably should have figured this out sooner, but what child can see the women inside her mom, what with all the Motherness blocking out everything else? — Kelly Corrigan

Sport is a passion and out of passion comes love. No point trying to work out why some become heroes and others don't. The chosen ones just go into the pantheon and refuse to fade. Think of Bradman and Les Darcy, Phar Lap and Tommy Corrigan. — Les Carlyon