Leah Franqui > Quotes

“My mother is the reason that I love you,' Bhim said simply. 'She is the reason I know what love is.”
― Leah Franqui, America for Beginners

“He knew what it was to wish you were something different even when it was the thing that made you yourself.”
― Leah Franqui, America for Beginners

“She would rather be respected than desired and she didn't understand why a woman would make a different choice than that. When she had been younger, she had felt there was something lacking in her, the way she didn't seem to want passion, pleasure, the way her friends sometimes whispered that they did, the way they giggled over vegetable markets, comparing their husbands' genitals, the way they sighed over kissing scenes in movies, complaining that their husbands never touched them that way anymore. Now Swati didn’t have to feel that there was anything wrong with her. A woman her age wasn’t supposed to want such things.”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“Of course she missed her mother. Didn't everyone? Wasn't that what being an adult WAS, really? Missing your mother?”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“How different the world was when she had a purpose. How much better. Everything was more painful when she was aimless.”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“Everyone talked about love all the time, but what was love, really, other than being known? Being seen and understood?”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“In the months after her death he had heard her every day, yelling at him for not brushing his teeth for long enough or wearing a dirty shirt or not offering to help an older woman if he saw one, not that she would have ever accepted help herself. But with time her voice had grown softer and less precise, and he hated it. It was like losing her all over again. No one cared about him enough to yell at him now. No one existed who would bother.”
― Leah Franqui, America for Beginners

“Everything is better with tea," she told him.”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“Rebecca decided to call her mother, who she knew might give her good advice by virtue of recommending the thing Rebecca least wanted to do. Arguments with her mother solidified Rebecca’s resolve on a number of issues and she looked forward to them as a kind of reinforcement against her own fears.”
― Leah Franqui, America for Beginners

“That was part of why she had left, really, because she didn't even KNOW what she might want, only that it would not be found in the life she was living.”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“Sometimes, a small, sad part of Rachel wondered of perhaps he was having an affair. Arjun had had an affair, Swati had explained, with someone he had met at his tennis club. Why did people do that? Why did they have to betray each other, to make the problem between two people seem like they were really about someone else entirely? It was the coward's way, she thought, To throw someone else in the middle of your own fire.”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“Ram had been in charge and she had accepted it. She had never realized that had she not accepted, he could not have remained in charge.”
― Leah Franqui, America for Beginners

“Gossip was like malaria, highly contagious, and eternal in the body.”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“For all their claims to modesty and simplicity, he found these Indian aunties by and large to be a vain lot, always conscious of their need to make an entrance, of their gold jewelry and their fine purses, and he felt it part of his job to accommodate them, exclaiming over their smooth skin and dark hair, which he knew owed more to dye than to youth.”
― Leah Franqui, America for Beginners

“Of course. It’s exhausting, all that healthy living.”
― Leah Franqui, America for Beginners

“...relieved in that way a good cry, when you really need it, is a kind of medicine.”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“What was the point of any of it? Who was she trying to prove anything to? It was over. She had not fallen, she had jumped, She might as well keep jumping. It would, then, be her choice, in the end, where she landed.”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“What was it about people that made a stranger someone you could love, and a person you had known for all your life someone you didn’t know at all?”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“...nothing could give her purpose; she had to take it.”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“So much of life had to be endured, Swati thought. Not the way, of course, people living horrible lives endured so much, but the way that even ordinary people like herself has most of their lives happen TO them.”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“Her body felt like it was buzzing when she woke up in the morning, brimming with energy in a way she hadn't felt for months. THIS IS WHAT PURPOSE FEELS LIKE, she reminded herself.”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“An unattended husband is always a bad thing...”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“Rachel hugged him and walked off into the afternoon, sure her future held adventure. It had to, didn't it?”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“Pival nodded weakly and let every word play over and over in her head until they formed a barrier around her heart. And in her mind she thanked him, for teaching her to be strong.”
― Leah Franqui, America for Beginners

“I think we should both go home, and we will find what we want when we do. I want a life that is mine. I think you do, too. I think you will find that if you think about what it is you were trying to leave behind.”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“She hadn’t really known what Bengali was, to be honest, or that it applied to anything other than tigers.”
― Leah Franqui, America for Beginners

“Reading would have been a victory, there, something she had committed to despite the obstacles. Something she felt proud of accomplishing. Now, with nothing but time, reading just felt like a way of distracting herself from reality.”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“It was so easy to be sure of things when you were twenty.”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“It’s a nice city, right? New Orleans. I’ve only been here once before, I don’t remember liking it so much. New York is great and I love it more than anything, but it’s nice to be somewhere that feels like it’s the product of people, not companies. You know what I mean?”
― Leah Franqui, America for Beginners

“She had decided to try not to be afraid anymore of the things she wanted.”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land