Emma Straub Quotes & Sayings

It was crazy, what young people believed was possible, what so many earnest twenty-three-year-olds took for granted about the rest of their lives. — Emma Straub

She wanted the world to stop and take notice before hobbling forward, forever changed. The problem was that no one seemed to be changed but her. — Emma Straub

the night before, but now, moments before their scheduled departure, he was wavering. Had he packed enough books? He walked back and forth in front — Emma Straub

Yes, it was true that Franny had gotten thicker in the last decade, but that was what happened unless you were a high-functioning psychotic, and she had other things to think about. Franny knew plenty of women who had chosen to prioritize the eternal youth of their bodies, and they were all miserable creatures, their taut triceps unable to conceal their dissatisfaction with their empty stomachs and unfulfilling lives. Franny liked to eat, and to feed people, and she wasn't embarrassed that her body displayed such proclivities. — Emma Straub

Franny liked this moment most of all: being alone in the kitchen after almost everything was finished, and listening to the assembled guests chatting happily, knowing they were soon to be fed. — Emma Straub

It was so long ago now that the job felt like part of her soul. Like being a teacher or an artist who made things out of sand. You never really saw the results. You just trusted that you knew what you were doing and that everything would work out okay in the end. — Emma Straub

They were with their mother, and so they were acting like children. — Emma Straub

Having a daughter whose company he actually enjoyed was one of Jim's favorite accomplishments. The odds were against you, in all matters of family planning. You couldn't choose to have a boy or a girl; you couldn't choose to have a child who favored you over the other parent. You could only accept what came along naturally... — Emma Straub

Friendships were tricky things, especially friendships as old as theirs was. Nudity was nothing more than a collection of hard-earned scars and marks. Love was a given, uncomplicated by sex or vows, but honesty was always waiting there, ready to capsize the steady boat. — Emma Straub

... She might have thought that it was the case, that all things worked out in the end, and that the world was a benevolent place, but she knew better now, and had to fake it. — Emma Straub

Happy was a word for sorority girls and clowns, and those were two distinctly fucked-up groups of people. — Emma Straub

A good boy almost all of the time, as well behaved as a loyal hound — Emma Straub

... She was as beautiful and lost as a landlocked mermaid. — Emma Straub

But there was no way that any man would ever have typed up a list of instructions and usual information for his home, unless of course he were being paid to do so. It was the kind of thoughtful touch that only women were intrinsically capable of, no matter what any quack therapist on television said. — Emma Straub

Kids are forever, even if love isn't, right? — Emma Straub

It was the most beautiful dress Harry had ever seen. It wasn't just a dress; it was a religion. — Emma Straub

It was officially the most horrible time of the summer, when everyone was starting to come back, unpack, do laundry, repack, and go to school, all while noisily updating social media with pictures of everybody hugging each other and their stupid siblings and their stupid dogs. — Emma Straub

the major accomplishment of her life was producing two children who seemed to like each other even when no one else was looking, — Emma Straub

A good swimming pool could do that - make the rest of the world seem impossibly insignificant, as far away as the surface of the moon. — Emma Straub

Taylor Swift had probably slept with more people than she had, and good for her. — Emma Straub

It seemed like folly to imagine that one could fill a house (or a tent) with relatives and still expect to have a pleasant vacation. — Emma Straub

Choices were easy to make until you realized how long life could be. — Emma Straub

The Internet was excellent for confirming one's worst fears about the human race. — Emma Straub

Maybe that was the answer to good parenting - pretending the first child was the second. — Emma Straub

There was nothing about youth that was fair: the young hadn't done anything to deserve it, and the old hadn't done anything to drive it away. — Emma Straub

It was nice to be in such close physical proximity, even though they hadn't spoken in months, and only via cursory birthday cards and the like. In the end, it didn't matter. Sisters were sisters. — Emma Straub

Teenagers and younger children did not need to sit in business class, let alone first - that was Franny's philosophy. The extra room was for people who could appreciate it, truly appreciate it, and she did. — Emma Straub

There was nothing in life harder or more important than agreeing every morning to stay the course, to go back to your forgotten self of so many years ago, and to make the same decision. Marriages, like ships, needed steering, and steady hands at the wheel. — Emma Straub

Parenthood is the only job that gets progressively harder every single year, and you never, ever, ever get a raise. — Emma Straub

Maybe that was the key to all good relationships, having oceans of time apart. — Emma Straub

force them to band together. Jim imagined himself and Franny striding into a Mallorcan courtroom, the bump on Franny's head now the size of a tennis ball, hard proof of Antoni's negligence. "And how are you?" Charles asked. He purposefully — Emma Straub

Dogs were gloriously uncomplicated creatures - food and play and sleep and love, that was all they needed. — Emma Straub

Once Charles arrived, Franny would start laughing the way she had when she was twenty-four, and the rest of them could start setting one another on fire for all she cared. That's what best friends did: ruin people for everyone else. — Emma Straub

Laura was going to sew herself into the shape of happiness all on her own. — Emma Straub

It's a rental, I said, realizing when I said it that our house was the only rental on the block. Maybe something unseemly had happened there: adultery, Judaism, modern dance. — Emma Straub

Why couldn't everyone stay young forever? If not on the outside, then just on the inside, where no one ever got too old to be optimistic. — Emma Straub

They had chosen to make the leap and, having leapt, were delighted to find that the world was even more beautiful than they'd hoped. — Emma Straub

When the kids were little, she and Zoe had been friends with another mom in the neighborhood, and this lady's kid was so horrible that they both mentioned it to her, that he seemed like a miniature serial killer in training, and she stopped speaking to them. Pretty soon she moved out of the neighborhood, and Elizabeth guessed it was to move closer to whatever prison facility her son was bound to wind up in. People just didn't want to hear it. — Emma Straub

No on thought that they would be anything more or less than perfectly fine. — Emma Straub

All she wanted was a button she could push to pause her age, just for a little while, a few years, while she got used to the idea. — Emma Straub

What were parents anyway, except two people who had once thought they were the smartest people in the world? They were a delusional species, as tiny-brained as dinosaurs. — Emma Straub

Families were nothing more than hope cast out in a wide net, everyone wanting only the best. — Emma Straub

She had the wild look of someone who hadn't slept in twenty-four hours, with purplish semicircles underneath both her eyes. Being eighteen was like being made out of rubber and cocaine. — Emma Straub

They were just wading through the muck like everyone else. — Emma Straub

Going to one school from age five to age eighteen was like being buried in amber. It wasn't even like his walls, which were covered with layers of things - you had to be the same person from start to finish, with no big cognitive jumps. — Emma Straub

to be a hypocrite or a liar? Jim wasn't — Emma Straub

Me tienen hasta los huevos. It means I've had it up to my balls. — Emma Straub

Things that happen in seven years: Brad Pitt in Tibet. The itch. — Emma Straub

Promised little waves and nice breezes, and she could practice her Spanish, which she had done well in during high school. Everyone - literally everyone - from her graduating class was — Emma Straub

Andi Teran's first novel is vivid and fully realized, an entire universe expertly condensed into the pages you hold in your hands. Ana herself is a complicated delight, and by the end of the book I wanted to scoop her up into my arms. — Emma Straub

Jim's vague understanding was that she had so much money that a strict job description was superfluous. — Emma Straub

Like most things, sex got better with age until one hit a certain plateau, and then it was like breakfast, unlikely to change unless one ran out of milk and was forced to improvise. — Emma Straub

Some people smoked crack in alleyways. Franny ate chocolate. On the scale of things, it seemed entirely reasonable. — Emma Straub

Islands, being harder to get to, naturally separated some of the wheat from the chaff, which was the entire philosophy behind places like Nantucket, where children grew up feeling entitled to private beaches and loud pants. — Emma Straub

Leaving. That was the word she liked to use. Not going away, which implied a return, but leaving, which implied a jet plane. — Emma Straub

Why bother getting married, going through all the pomp and pageantry, if you didn't think it was going to last? It was far easier to live in sin and not have to deal with the paperwork. — Emma Straub

If the Enchanted Forest were in a movie, they'd always be playing Bob Dylan or Van Morrison or maybe even Leonard Cohen in the background. Greta thought about that a lot. Sometimes when she was taking a shower or helping her mom in the restaurant, she'd imagine what kind of scene it would be and what would be playing to set the mood. — Emma Straub

Now whenever Franny or Jim spoke to someone who kept a car in Manhattan, they reacted with quiet horror, like people who'd been subjected to the rantings of a mentally ill person at a cocktail party. — Emma Straub

That was another thing Ruby would miss about New York, if she were leaving: she's miss how much space people gave you. You could have a fucking sobbing fit on the subway and no one would mess with you. You could barf in a garbage can on the street corner and no one would mess with you. If you were giving off invisible vibes, people respected that. People thought New Yorkers were rude, but really they were just leaving you to your own stuff. It was respectful! In a city with so many people, a New Yorker would always pretend not to see you when you didn't want to be seen. — Emma Straub

So much of being a good friend was knowing when to keep your mouth shut. — Emma Straub

It glowed in the mid-morning sunlight, the black shutters on the open windows eyelashes on a beautiful face. — Emma Straub

There wasn't enough time in the world, not for the things that mattered most. — Emma Straub

I mean, it's never too late to decide to do something else. Becoming an adult doesn't mean that you suddenly have all the answers. — Emma Straub

It's about you. I always thought that you would need some time, you know, to grow up, but I think I just realized that it's never going to happen, not while I'm sitting around waiting for it. — Emma Straub

Laura wanted all of it back, every moment, so that she could live it all over again. — Emma Straub

If I'd had a friend next to me, I would have squeezed her arm and said, Can you believe this? - but kitsch wasn't kitsch if you were alone. — Emma Straub