Maame Quotes

“How do you know if you're genuinely happy or if you're just mostly all right, with sprinkles of laughter and occasional shit storms of sadness?”
― Jessica George, Maame

“We grow up fast. Not by force, but because we are needed.'
'I think sometimes we're needed for the wrong reasons.”
― Jessica George, Maame

“Regardless of how you behave, a lot of things are going to be out of your control because this world was made to test you. Protect your peace in whatever and every way that you can.”
― Jessica George, Maame

“I don't think you turn thirty and become immune to mistake-making or lesson learning. You grow wiser (supposedly) but never omniscient. There's always something you need to be taught, and so you keep learning and you keep growing up- until you're dead.”
― Jessica George, Maame

“Thing is, you don't ever go back Maddie, to life before, and my advice is to accept that. To accept that you're not the same person you were when (view spoiler) and you can't be again. Accept that your life is different now because of this monumental, irreversible change and that it's okay to feel guilty one day and indescribable happiness another. This is life now. This is how you live.”
― Jessica George, Maame

“I can't comprehend living to work, but then I'm afraid of working just to live.”
― Jessica George, Maame

“A person’s troubles are not measured by the size of those troubles, but by how much they weigh on the individual carrying them.”
― Jessica George, Maame

“Everyone talks about the importance of standing out but never the benefits of fitting in.”
― Jessica George, Maame

“There’s often a misconception that to be well-loved, the love has to come from multiple sources, when truthfully, one or two people can love you with the strength of ten.”
― Jessica George, Maame

“You're Christian Shu. Do you always believe in God?

Yeah, of course. Got To.

Why?

Because, she says. I can't carry on living believing human beings are as good as it gets. She looks at me.

We're the worst.”
― Jessica George, Maame

“Many assume love is straightforward, when
really it is the most complicated of things. There is a right way, a preferred way, for each individual, to love and be loved by someone—but there isn’t only one way. I believe the difficulty of life has much to do with understanding and then navigating how the people you love both express and receive love themselves. It cannot be your responsibility, your burden,
to reshape people into someone you’d like them to be. Ultimately, you must
either accept a person for who they are, how they behave, how they express themselves emotionally, and find a healthy way to live with them, or let them go entirely.”
― Jessica George, Maame

“My parents are not special people, they’re ordinary, and one of my problems is that I’m expecting perfection from ordinary people. They’re not saints or masters of knowledge just people, people who have children, which, last time I checked, required no proficiency test. People who continue to make mistakes, attempt to learn from them and repeat, until death.”
― Jessica George, Maame

“Some things you’re not meant to be saved from,” Nia says. “Some things have to be lessons.”
― Jessica George, Maame

“It's about what love is. Which is trust, commitment, empathy, and respect. It means really giving a shit about the other person.”
― Jessica George, Maame

“[A]lthough I didn't think I'd be rich, I expected to be happy and the failure to do so has left me gasping for air most of the day.”
― Jessica George, Maame

“It’s funny, really, because what my mum dislikes in my brother is what my brother dislikes in my mum, but neither of them can see they’re arguing with themselves.”
― Jessica George, Maame

“For some reason, at night, when you’re meant to be sleeping, your brain wants answers to everything.”
― Jessica George, Maame

“I almost tell her that fun doesn’t equate to happiness; at the very least, it lends you happiness and I want to know how to keep it.”
― Jessica George, Maame

“One day we’ll be orphans; one day I’ll be faced with the question of: who am I without my parents?”
― Jessica George, Maame

“apologies only benefit the beggar. They get a clear conscience, and I get a sequence of hollow words incapable of changing anything.”
― Jessica George, Maame

“How someone shows you they love you has less to do with you and all to do with them.”
― Jessica George, Maame

“I think about how the language I’ve mourned never learning has on some levels already been taught. A language I thought too difficult to warrant effort has already embedded itself into me.”
― Jessica George, Maame

“Having lost someone doesn't mean you understand what it's like when someone else grieves.”
― Jessica George, Maame

“How do you know if you’re genuinely happy or if you’re just mostly all right, with sprinkles of laughter and occasional shit storms of sadness? Maybe I’ve only ever been all right.”
― Jessica George, Maame

“Still, that doesn’t change the fact that although I didn’t think I’d be rich, I expected to be happy and the failure to do so has left me gasping for air most of the day.”
― Jessica George, Maame

“When people are ill to the point of no return to full health, to the person they used to be, some don’t have the stomach to stick around.”
― Jessica George, Maame

“It's an ordinary week within the most extraordinary circumstances because apparently – and this is what everyone fails to mention about the grieving process – I still have to live.”
― Jessica George, Maame

“We grow up fast. Not by force, but because we are needed.”
― Jessica George, Maame

“know it sounds it. But you’re not supposed to ‘get over’ someone dying,” he says, “especially someone you loved, and your feelings of guilt may not be justified, but they are natural. Thing is, you don’t ever go back, Maddie, to life before, and my advice is to accept that. To accept that you’re not the same person you were when your dad was alive and you can’t be again. Accept that your life is different now because of this monumental, irreversible change and that it’s okay to feel guilty one day and indescribable happiness another.”
― Jessica George, Maame

“I almost tell her that fun doesn't equate to happiness; at the very least, it lends you happiness and I want to know how to keep it.”
― Jessica George, Maame