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On Top of Everything

Book by Sarah-Kate Lynch · 4 quotes · Outlook, Worry, Bad Things

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On Top of Everything Quotes

“Only worry about what you absolutely know about,' Mr. Worthington said to me, putting my mind back where it belonged. 'That's the key. Worrying about anything else is just a waste of time and emotion. I know that seems obvious but honestly, the more information you have, the less your imagination can run away with you so the secret is to find out as much as you can about what your particular problem is....and you'll be amazed at how this simplifies things. You no longer have to worry about the what ifs.”

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“[D]espite her alternative leanings, it turned out Crystal was not particularly psyco-babbly or airy-fairy or tree-huggy, as one might have expected. In fact, the first thing she did was write a list. She said writing lists helped calm her down when she was stressed about anything because it put problems in order. You can look at a list of things and see how you can tackle each one separately without feeling sick about it, she said. Whereas if they all just stayed jumbled in your mind in one great bit sticky ball you never got to consider them individually. She actually spoke a lot of sense for someone with toe rings and a Chinese tattoo.”

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“She was a great wife...and a wonderful mother, a good daughter, a devoted sister and a truly nice person, which doesn't sound like much but it was one of her ambitions, to be a nice person, and she really got there, I think. She was always there. Or close, anyway. Of course, she did spend her first thrity-nine years worrying too much and waiting for rotten things to happen to her. Then when they did, and some of the things were obviously, really, truly rotten, she realised she could have a lot more fun not waiting for them. So you know what she did then? She just stopped seeing the rot.”

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“In the past I think I had corralled rotten things into groups of three because at some level it gave me the impression I was controlling them, keeping track of them. In my world I believed the universe would only dish out so much shite before it realised it had overdone it and corrected matters. That, of course, turned out to be nonsense. The truth is that sometimes the shite just keeps on coming and that is what is so unfair. But here's the thing: it's never all shite. If you can wake up in the morning for just long enough to breathe in and out and see the sun shining, you're already surviving it. You're already if not getting around it, at least getting over it, getting past it. And who knows what can happen then?”

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