Alison Lurie Quotes & Sayings

Nature can seem cruel, but she balances her books. — Alison Lurie

We can lie in the language of dress or try to tell the truth; but unless we are naked and bald, it is impossible to be silent. — Alison Lurie

There is a peculiar burning odor in the room, like explosives. the kitchen fills with smoke and the hot, sweet, ashy smell of scorched cookies. The war has begun. — Alison Lurie

Most of the great works of juvenile literature are subversive in one way or another: they express ideas and emotions not generally approved of or even recognized at the time; they make fun of honored figures and piously held beliefs; and they view social pretenses with clear-eyed directness, remarking - as in Andersen's famous tale - that the emperor has no clothes. — Alison Lurie

But I think that sometimes, when one's behaved like a rather second-rate person, the way I did at breakfast, then in a kind of self-destructive shock one goes and does something really second-rate. Almost as if to prove it ... — Alison Lurie

There's a rule, I think. You get what you want in life, but not your second choice too. — Alison Lurie

In a sense much great literature is subversive, since its very existence implies that what matters is art, imagination, and truth. In what we call the real world, on the other hand, what usually counts is money, power, and public success. — Alison Lurie

Many Americans think of the rest of the world as a kind of Disneyland, a showplace for quaint fauna, flora and artifacts. They dress for travel in cheap, comfortable, childish clothes, as if they were going to the zoo and would not be seen by anyone except the animals. — Alison Lurie

Real literature, like travel, is always a surprise. — Alison Lurie

You can't write well with only the nice parts of your character, and only about nice things. And I don't want even to try anymore. I want to use everything, including hate and envy and lust and fear. — Alison Lurie

If nothing will finally survive of life besides what artists report of it, we have no right to report what we know to be lies. — Alison Lurie

We all want to be guilty, because guilt is power. — Alison Lurie

Other wars end eventually in victory, defeat or exhaustion, but the war between men and women goes on forever. — Alison Lurie

Though most tourists accepted the occasional comic misadventure, it was important to them that overall their vacation should be pleasant. When you spend money on a holiday you are essentially purchasing happiness: if you don't enjoy yourself you will feel defrauded. — Alison Lurie

The great subversive works of children's literature suggest that there are other views of human life besides those of the shopping mall and the corporation. They mock current assumptions and express the imaginative, unconventional, noncommercial view of the world in its simplest and purest form. They appeal to the imaginative, questioning, rebellious child within all of us, renew our instinctive energy, and act as a force for change. This is why such literature is worthy of our attention and will endure long after more conventional tales have been forgotten. — Alison Lurie

Even when we say nothing our clothes are talking noisily to everyone who sees us, telling them who we are, where we come from, what we like to do in bed and a dozen other intimate things ... — Alison Lurie

Attempts to limit female mobility by hampering locomotion are ancient and almost universal. The foot-binding of upper-class Chinese girls and the Nigerian custom of loading women's legs with pounds of heavy brass wire are extreme examples, but all over the world similar stratagems have been employed to make sure that once you have caught a woman she cannot run away, and even if she stays around she cannot keep up with you ... Literally as well as figuratively modern women's shoes are what keeps Samantha from running as fast as Sammy. — Alison Lurie

Brian knows the affair is wrong. He's known from the moment Wendy first undressed in his office. But with her hot, wet tongue in his ear, and her taut, pink nipples straining against his starched white shirt, and with Mick Jagger's strident voice squawking about satisfaction on the tiny transistor radio, Brian's body refuses to obey.
Instead of shoving Wendy out the door, he shoves her onto the unmade bed. — Alison Lurie

As one went to Europe to see the living past, so one must visit Southern California to observe the future. — Alison Lurie

With a pencil and paper, I could revise the world. — Alison Lurie

America has a history of political isolation and economic self-sufficiency; its citizens have tended to regard the rest of the world as a disaster area from which lucky or pushy people emigrate to the Promised Land. — Alison Lurie

We say something every morning when we decide how to dress. — Alison Lurie

You get into the habit of being angry and hurt by life, and then when something good happens you can't accept it because it doesn't fit the pattern. — Alison Lurie

The fashion industry is no more able to preserve a style that men and women have decided to abandon than to introduce one they do not choose to accept. — Alison Lurie

Grosvenor and Burke suggest that continually, though silently, a school building tells students who they are and how they should think about the world. It can help to manufacture rote obedience or independent activity; it can create high self-confidence or low self-esteem. — Alison Lurie

The fashion pages of magazines such as Cosmopolitan now seem to specialize in telling the career girl what to wear to charm the particular wrong type of man who reads Playboy, while the editorial pages tell her how to cope with the resulting psychic damage. — Alison Lurie

Fashion is free speech, and one of the privileges, if not always one of the pleasures, of a free world — Alison Lurie