Home > Author > Elinor Lipman
1 " That's how it was on Irving Circle and how I was raised: You made the best out of what was within reach, which meant friendships engineered by parents and by the happenstance of housing. I stayed with it because we both had queenly older sisters who rarely condescended to play with us, because Shelley was adopted and I was not, because Shelley had Clue and Life, and I did not "
― Elinor Lipman , The Inn at Lake Devine
2 " There is an old Jewish story, an ordinary Jewish joke. A father was teaching his little son to be less afraid and have more courage. “Jump,” he said, “and I will catch you.” And the little boy trusted him and the little boy jumped. And when his father caught him he felt filled with love. And when he didn’t, he was filled with something else…something more. Life. (From the movie 'Then She Found Me.') "
― Elinor Lipman , Then She Found Me
3 " I hadn't known up to that moment that I had a surname that was recognizably Jewish, or that people named Marx would be unwelcome somewhere in the United States because of it. "
4 " It was a noteworthy lesson, even for someone who'd been fed a daily diet of italicized lessons: that people in high places, luminaries with advanced degrees in Classics and in possession of excellent manners, can disappoint you as profoundly as anyone else. "
― Elinor Lipman , My Latest Grievance
5 " for those who notice, his face wears his goodness quite handsomely. "
― Elinor Lipman , On Turpentine Lane
6 " It was not complicated, and, as my mother pointed out, not even personal: They had a hotel; they didn't want Jews; we were Jews. (The Inn at Lake Devine) "
7 " Vanitas vanitatum: elective surgery, in other words. "
― Elinor Lipman , The Pursuit of Alice Thrift
8 " The Republic of Love by Carol Shields "
― Elinor Lipman , Good Riddance
9 " He won a free teeth-bleaching, upper and lower arches, in a dentist’s lottery. It explained his too-easy grin and his drinking coffee through a straw during what would later be classified as our first date. "
10 " The New Yorkers by Cathleen Schine "
11 " How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life by Mameve Medwed "
12 " Happy All the Time by Laurie Colwin "
13 " Selling the Lite of Heaven by Suzanne Strempek Shea "
14 " You’re a serious one, aren’t you?” I confirmed that I was and always would be: a serious infant, a serious child, a serious teenager, a serious student, a serious adult. "
