Laurie Frankel Quotes

Such a tough life. This is not the easy way."
"No," Penn agreed, "but I'm not sure easy is what I want for the kids anyway."
She looked up at him. "Why the hell not?"
"I mean, if we could have everything, sure. If we can have it all, yeah. I wish them easy, successful, fun-filled lives, crowned with good friends, attentive lovers, heaps of money, intellectual stimulation, and good views out the window. I wish them eternal beauty, international travel, and smart things to watch on tv. But if I can't have everything, if I only get a few, I'm not sure easy makes my wish list."
"Really?"
"Easy is nice. But its not as good as getting to be who you are or stand up for what you believe in," said Penn. "Easy is nice. But I wonder how often it leads to fulfilling work or partnership or being."
"Easy probably rules out having children," Rosie admitted.
"Having children, helping people, making art, inventing anything, leading the way, tackling the world's problems, overcoming your own. I don't know. Not much of what I value in our lives is easy. But there's not much of it I'd trade for easy either, I don't think.

Yeah, but you're lucky, Janey, he said. You have so many good friends. You have people to do stuff with. You have more friends than time to hang out with them, and they're all near you. Finding love is easy- it's fate- you just sit back and let it happen, have faith that if it hasn't yet, it will soon, but then that's done, and you realize you're on your own for the rest of your life. It's up to you to make the rest of it happen because destiny is done with you, at least as far as your social life goes

Part of dedicating your life to studying literature is realizing that storytelling is more than just make-believe and that make-believe is far more important that we all pretend -- make believe -- it is. One way or another books tell the stories of their readers. But telling our lives is not the same as shaping them, whittling them away. Suddenly Jill had lost control. Her books had taken over and were in charge.

But if you made yourself up, you got to be exactly who you knew yourself to be.

After that she'd have to go elsewhere anyway for breadth of experience. A different part of the world where she would develop expertise in more than frostbite, and lost toes, and idiots frozen to their fishing poles. But Rue, followed by Ben, followed by Rigel and Orion, had put a stop to that plan too; children being the enemies of plans and anything new besides themselves.

Ultimately, eventually, we let go. We do this not because we're ready. We do this not because we've mended. We do this not because we've mourned and come to terms and gotten over it and moved on. We never move on. We don't let go so much as lose our grip and fall because remembering is not enough..memory is imperfect. It is full of holes. It is more space than matter, like lace. It is at once sodden with sorrow and desiccated from lack of blood flow, the obvious result of a broken heart. It makes things up in hopeless attempts to comfort itself. It fills fissure with fantasy. It screws shut its eyes and balls up its fists and flings itself to the ground in a kicking, screaming, blind-rage temper tantrum against reality. But mostly,..memory keeps taking on more.

Who people think they are and what people think they want is not really who they are or what they want.

There are few children more treasured than ill-behaved ones who belong to someone else.

Dispelling fear. Taming what was scary not by hiding it, not by blocking it or burying it, not by keeping it secret, but by reminding themselves, and everyone else, to choose love, choose openness, to think and be calm. That there were more ways than just two, wider possibilities than hidden or betrayed, stalled or brokenhearted, male or female, right or wrong. Middle ways. Ways beyond. They

It's a good thing people's needs don't all arise at the same time; otherwise we wouldn't be able to meet them all.

This was loss that ruined your life leading straight to gain that saved it. It wasn't silver lining; it was a whole silver sky.

There was nothing yet to fear, and so he passed it off as joy, as heart-pounding, pulse-quaking joy. Not as a premonition. Not as the moment to grab her hand and turn and run.

This is what Grandma was worried about, you know.'
'Me eating a whole chocolate cake practically all by myself in a single sitting?'
'You falling in love with a computer geek. Sure, they have good stock options and smokin' hot bods, but what about that dark side of genius that reanimates the dead?

Poems are surmountable. They have rhymes and rhythms to help you make meaning. They're short enough. . . to read and reread until you've made some sense of them. Short stories are a different ballgame. You read them and understand the words completely. You know what happens in each sentence. You follow the dialogue and action. at the end, you know exactly what's happened. And also you have no idea.

Just because it's made up, doesn't mean it isn't real...Made up is the most powerful real there is.

You can't tell people what to be, I'm afraid," said Rosie. "You can only love and support who they already are.

If you give all your worry to one thing, soon you'll realize that's way too much and worry about it less and you'll feel more in control of it for keeping it at the front of your mind and that will help you worry less too.

It happens to everyone," she assured Princess Stephanie.

"It does?" Stephanie doubted it.

"Sure. Everyone's someone else sometimes. Everyone transforms. Maybe not in quite the same way as you, but that's sort of the point. The curse - if you will - it happens to everyone, but not to any two people in the same way. And no one likes it, no matter who's waiting inside.

But happy is harder than it sounds,

For the moment's all there is, my darling.

Sometimes when I remember we aren't the same person, it shocks me.

If you wrote your own characters, they didn't disappoint you like real people did.

Easy is nice, but it's not as good as getting to be who you are or stand up for what you believe in.

Some sadness has no remedy. Some sadness you can't make better.

These kids, her multitudes, they could grow up. They could move Away. They could - they would - become new, become changed, become actual adult people in progress, people she wouldn't recognize, people she could not imagine. People remade. They would undergo miracles. They would transform. They would make magic. But they were her story, hers and Penn's, so however wide they wandered, they would always be right here.

That's what all stories want. They want to get out, get told, get heard.

Oh the things that hide secretly in our children, lying in wait, doing untold damage, yearning to be free. Alarming us beyond all measure.

You have to help him see that if he's disappearing from the world, that's too high a price to pay for fitting in. He has to see how 'You shouldn't push even though you want to' isn't the same as 'You shouldn't wear a dress even though you want to.

I'm so sorry because it's still not easy. You have a long, hard, terrible road ahead. There are lots of ways to travel it, but they all suck and they all involve letting go.

Virtue leads straight to transformation; transformation leads instantly to happily ever after.

This is how it always is. You have to make these huge decision on behalf of your kid, this tiny human whose fate and future is entirely in your hands. Who trusts you to know what's good and right and then to be able to make that happen. You never have enough information. You don't get to see the future. And if you screw up - if with your incomplete contradictory information you make the wrong call - nothing less than your child's entire future and happiness is at stake. It's impossible. It's heartbreaking. It's maddening. But there's no alternative."

"Sure there is," she said.

"What?"

"Birth control.

Our first concern is his happiness of course; but not just today." Because it wasn't that simple, was it? Raising children was the longest of long games.