J. Ryan Stradal Quotes & Sayings

As the eastbound flight reached cruising altitude, Cindy opened the latest issue of the Economist - she saved her smarter reading for public situations - when — J. Ryan Stradal

was like being told you can run free one day - in June several years from now - but during every second of the intervening time, you'll be getting run over by the world's slowest steamroller, and every day it cracks a bone, and recracks it, and recracks it, and when you're eighteen all you're going to have is a body full of dust, lifted and carried into the future like a flag loose from its mast. — J. Ryan Stradal

hadn't grown into being a woman, she had become a woman with an exclamation mark, the sort of hardy feminine brute of the Pleistocene from which all women, great and frail, are descended. — J. Ryan Stradal

Yes, he just wanted her to want to be a mom, in the same way that he felt, with all of his blood, that he was a dad first, and everything else in the world an obscure, unfathomably distant second. — J. Ryan Stradal

Where did you source your ingredients from?" one of them asked. "Are they local?" "Yeah," Pat said, "they're from the store about a mile from my house." One of the girls behind the table laughed. "Sorry," she said. — J. Ryan Stradal

And she would pray for guidance, but she wouldn't ask the Lord forgiveness for swearing at her husband. That was gonna stand for now. — J. Ryan Stradal

There were Lolo McCaffrey's thick braids and patchouli-oil smell, crouched down by the nutritional bars, her moon face staring at the label of a Clif Bar like someone who can't read. — J. Ryan Stradal

Have you been in a canoe?" "Anywhere where two people can fit, they can have sex. It's the law. — J. Ryan Stradal

wavering. She was not raised to confront people or defend herself in a confrontation; she was raised to appease, to mollify, to calm, to tuck little monsters in at night, to apologize for things she screwed up without realizing, to forgive, to sweeten, and her bars, her bars did that for the world, they were her I'm Sorry, they were her Like Me, they were her Love Freely Given. — J. Ryan Stradal

It all looks the same in the toilet the next morning... — J. Ryan Stradal

God made her a giving person, and even in this house of people who could be so hateful and hard, her one skill, she knew, was to serve them and make them happy, the way even an unwatered tree still provides whatever shade it can. — J. Ryan Stradal

She suddenly felt sorry for these people, for perverting the food of their childhood, the food of their mothers and grandmothers, and rejecting its unconditional love in favor of what? What? Pat did not understand. — J. Ryan Stradal

His love for her made her feel like she was wearing sunglasses even when she wasn't. — J. Ryan Stradal

Yes, the dish was flawless, and the wine pairing was supernatural, but these people were out of control. Were they trying to emotionally justify the meal's price tag? Did they have too many cocktails in the drinks tent? It was a breathtaking meal, one of the best that Cindy had ever had, but the hysteria around her was making her brain red. — J. Ryan Stradal

already thinking about the good and the bad and the deep human necessity of it all, and how anybody ever got anything done without family, and how someone could give that up in the amount of time it takes to seal an envelope, with the same saliva once used to seal a marriage. — J. Ryan Stradal

To Eva, Cousin Randy was an untouchable demigod - an angel's wing broken from an ancient statue, sent here to help her hover above all things insipid and heartbreaking. — J. Ryan Stradal

After decades away from the Midwest, she'd forgotten that bewildering generosity was a common regional tic. — J. Ryan Stradal

What he would tell her instead, he hadn't yet decided, but now was not the time to think about such things. Now was the time to sit with his little family of two people, and cry. — J. Ryan Stradal

But Octavia was a nice person with a big, generous heart who felt sorry for outsiders and tried to help them. And people like her never get any thanks for their selflessness. They are not the ones with the hardness to make others wait; they are the ones left waiting, until their souls are broken like old pieces of bread and scattered in the snow for the birds. They can go right ahead and aspire to the stars, but the only chance they'll ever have to fly is in a thousand pieces, melting in the hot guts of something predatory. — J. Ryan Stradal

When it came to Eva's life, her mom had the awareness of a fifty-cent guppy; there were sad-eyed janitors at school who seemed to have more insight into Eva's heart than her own parents did. — J. Ryan Stradal

They were generous in the way of people running a garage sale who give things away to the folks who come at the end. — J. Ryan Stradal

He couldn't help it - he was in love by the time she left the kitchen - but love made him feel sad and doomed, as usual. What he didn't know was that she'd suffered through a decade of cool, commitment-phobic men, and Lars's kindness, but mostly his effusive, overt enthusiasm for her, was at that time exactly what she wanted in a partner. — J. Ryan Stradal

With a dog, it's almost like having a kid." "No, it's not like having a kid," she said. "It's preferable in every possible way. That makes it like having a dog. — J. Ryan Stradal

She hated those boys and knew that they were stupid and hence their opinions were baseless and the impact of their lives on the planet would be measured only in undifferentiated emissions of methane and nitrates . . . but still. — J. Ryan Stradal

Dormitories are even cooler than I thought they would be," Eva said. "They're like a prison, but the sex is worse," Braque said. — J. Ryan Stradal

She's told me that even though you won't meet her tonight, she's telling you her life story through the ingredients in this meal, and although you won't shake her hand, you've shared her heart. Now please, continue eating and drinking, and thank you again. — J. Ryan Stradal

Braque was used to this kind of crap; her mom had been a master choreographer of anxious micromanagement since Braque could remember. — J. Ryan Stradal

When Lars first held her, his heart melted over her like butter on warm bread, and he would never get it back. When mother and baby were asleep in the hospital room, he went out to the parking lot, sat in his Dodge Omni, and cried like a man who had never wanted anything in his life until now. — J. Ryan Stradal

One of the things that Eva hated the most about being a kid was how everyone always told her that childhood was the best time of their entire lives, and don't grow up too fast, and enjoy these carefree days while you can. In those moments, her body felt like the world's smallest prison, and she escaped in her mind to her chile plants, resting on rock wool substrate under a grow light in a bedroom closet, as much a prisoner of USDA hardiness zone 5b as she was. — J. Ryan Stradal

if one day, that woman would seek her out, and for whatever balance of time, Cindy would have a daughter again. For now, she would return to her kitchen, wash the plate, the cup, and the fork, and just live in the world she had created, the world where the two of them existed, and nothing more. — J. Ryan Stradal

What an honor to live in a part of the world that loves good old-fashioned baking. — J. Ryan Stradal

Girls were lucky, they didn't have to have a thing. They just had to look nice and come to your shows and not call you all the time about stupid stuff. — J. Ryan Stradal

What people don't understand about deer is that they're vermin. They're giant, furry cockroaches. They invade a space, reproduce like hell, and eat everything in sight. — J. Ryan Stradal

Eva knew that her mom hadn't gotten the vegan sorbet because it was too expensive. In their home, cost was the main reason why something good didn't happen. — J. Ryan Stradal

She looked like a shorter, wider Hillary Clinton, but with the posture and attitude of someone fifty-eight hours into a sixty-hour workweek. — J. Ryan Stradal

Fiona and Jarl had gotten engaged a few weeks before, on Black Friday. Jarl thought they could get a better deal on rings that way. — J. Ryan Stradal

Even though she had an overbite and the shakes, she was six feet tall and beautiful, and not like a statue or a perfume advertisement, but in a realistic way, like how a truck or a pizza is beautiful at the moment you want it most. — J. Ryan Stradal

It made hot girls forget you were a dork, which is the point of all music. — J. Ryan Stradal

Still, he had been a charismatic, talented scoundrel who almost certainly was on to a new woman after a week in Japan; there was nothing to long for or feel sorry for. — J. Ryan Stradal