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The Vacationers QUOTES

The Vacationers QUOTES

1 " So much for being a good friend was knowing when to keep your mouth shut. "

― Emma Straub , The Vacationers

2 " Maybe that was the answer to good parenting—pretending the first child was the second. "

― Emma Straub , The Vacationers

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

― Emma Straub , The Vacationers

4 " 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 , The Vacationers

5 " 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. "

― Emma Straub , The Vacationers

6 " She’d read all of Jane Austen that year—Austen was good, but when you told people you liked Pride and Prejudice, they expected you to be all sunshine and wedding veils, and Sylvia preferred the rainy moors. The Brontës weren’t afraid to let someone die of consumption, which Sylvia respected. "

― Emma Straub , The Vacationers

7 " 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 , The Vacationers

8 " Families were nothing more than hope cast out in a wide net, everyone wanting only the best. "

― Emma Straub , The Vacationers

9 " 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 , The Vacationers

10 " 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 , The Vacationers

11 " 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 , The Vacationers

12 " So much of being a good friend was knowing when to keep your mouth shut. "

― Emma Straub , The Vacationers

13 " Life would be so much more interesting if one could ask all the questions one wanted to and expect honest answers. "

― Emma Straub , The Vacationers

14 " Maybe that was the key to all good relationships, having oceans of time apart. "

― Emma Straub , The Vacationers

15 " 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 , The Vacationers

16 " 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 , The Vacationers

17 " That’s what best friends did: ruin people for everyone else. "

― Emma Straub , The Vacationers

18 " 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 , The Vacationers

19 " 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 , The Vacationers

20 " It is not so much a matter of traveling as of getting away; which of us has not some pain to dull, or some yoke to cast off? —GEORGE SAND, Winter in Majorca "

― Emma Straub , The Vacationers