Top 40 Mary Schmich Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Reading is a discount ticket to everywhere.”

— Mary Schmich

2. “Don’t waste your time on jealousy...”

— Mary Schmich

3. “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

Featured in: Quotes About New York

4. “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

5. “Worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum.”

— Mary Schmich

6. “Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts, and don’t put up with people that are reckless with yours.”

— Mary Schmich

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

— Mary Schmich

8. “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

9. “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

10. “Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.”

— Mary Schmich

11. “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.”

— Mary Schmich

12. “Get to know your parents, you never know when they’ll be gone for good.”

— Mary Schmich

13. “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

14. “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

15. “Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.”

— Mary Schmich

16. “Advice, like youth, probably wasted on the young.”

— Mary Schmich

17. “Don’t waste your time worrying about the future, it might never come.”

— Mary Schmich

18. “Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia.”

— Mary Schmich

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

— Mary Schmich

20. “Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.”

— Mary Schmich

21. “Don’t waste time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind.”

— Mary Schmich

22. “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

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

— Mary Schmich

24. “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

25. “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

26. “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

27. “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

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

— Mary Schmich

29. “The soul-sucking activity of TV-watching feels better when it is done with other souls.”

— Mary Schmich

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

— Mary Schmich

31. “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

32. “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

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

— Mary Schmich

34. “Linda Tripp has shown that a true friend is an archivist, a biographer.”

— Mary Schmich

35. “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

36. “The Hunger Games’ isn’t for everybody. But neither is ‘Anna Karenina.”

— Mary Schmich

37. “Books are like blankets, the mere sight of them around the house provides warmth and comfort. They are like mirrors, too, reflecting places I’ve been, phases I’ve been through, people I’ve loved or thought I did.”

— Mary Schmich

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

— Mary Schmich

39. “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

40. “The first gay person I ever met was surely not the first gay person I ever met.”

— Mary Schmich

41. “One thing you might want to learn before you attend the world’s largest ukulele lesson is how to say ukulele.”

— Mary Schmich

42. “You can figure out who you were by which movies you loved when.”

— Mary Schmich

43. “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