Jennifer Coburn > Quotes

“A trip to Paris had sounded so adventurous when I was first talking about it a year earlier. People spoke about the city with dreamy longing, as though Paris possessed a magic that could not be found elsewhere. I'd never heard anyone talk about Paris without sighing. The city was a Promised Land that held appeal for most everyone: artists, lovers, even people who just liked cheese.”
― Jennifer Coburn, We'll Always Have Paris: A Mother/Daughter Memoir

“To know Paris, Bruno began, pulling on his cigarette, you need to relax, have a glass of wine, and enjoy life.”
― Jennifer Coburn, We'll Always Have Paris: A Mother/Daughter Memoir

“Visiting Florence was like attending a surprise party every day.”
― Jennifer Coburn, We'll Always Have Paris: A Mother/Daughter Memoir

“Cradles of the Reich covers a dark period of history, but I hope readers will be heartened by how the connections women forge can carry us through the most harrowing of times and sometimes even drive us to act with heroism we hadn’t realized we were capable of.”
― Jennifer Coburn, Cradles of the Reich

“Just months earlier, Elsbeth had rolled her eyes at a neighbor who was carrying on about how pleasurable his new job was. “Spare me the false enthusiasm,” Elsbeth had told Gundi once the man was out of earshot. “A job is a job. It’s never pleasurable, or it would be called recreation. Work is work. You do what you need to in order to get by.”
― Jennifer Coburn, Cradles of the Reich

“My mother owns the Drama Queen bookstore in the theatre district and has the Midas touch when it comes to producing off-Broadway gay theatre. Her most recent success was with the all-male musical Oklahomo! The entire cast was clad in tight leather overalls or fringed chaps.”
― Jennifer Coburn, Tales From The Crib

“I am a thousand scattered pieces that no one has bothered to put together.”
― Jennifer Coburn, Reinventing Mona

“Okay,” Jack said. “I’m not really sure what you want from me.” “I want you to stop trying to deny every feeling I ever have, Jack.  I want you to stop telling me not to feel bad when I already do. I want you to stop telling me I look fine when it’s so patently obvious that I don’t. I want you to stop being so uncomfortable when things aren’t perfect that you immediately start trying to pretend they are.” Even as the words were coming out of my mouth, I realized how unfair I was being. Yes, I wanted for him to accept my emotional reality. But only when it suited me. I also wanted him to tell me that the baby would be fine when it was what I needed to hear. At least Jack was consistent. I was a nut job.”
― Jennifer Coburn, Tales From The Crib

“shaking her head. “It’s remarkable.” “That’s part of the problem, Gundi.” Sister Irma wiped away a tear. “I don’t want to be in a world where helping one another survive is remarkable.”
― Jennifer Coburn, Cradles of the Reich

“At forty-two, I was still holding up pretty well, but my once effortlessly lean body now look as though it belonged in a Dove firming cream ad -- the one where they give women permission to have thighs. When I unbuttoned my jeans at night, I swore I heard the same sound that Pillsbury dough made when I twisted the cylindrical container. My hair was beginning to gray, and when I smiled, the parentheses around my mouth remained. My least favorite position in yoga class was the downward dog because, as I hung my head downward, I always felt the skin from my face was about to splatter against my mat like a pancake batter hitting the griddle. So being called the top model by a young Italian was a wonderful souvenir, though cheaper than the toys sold outside the Pantheon in Rome.”
― Jennifer Coburn, We'll Always Have Paris: A Mother/Daughter Memoir

“If you want to do something, it can’t be because you want to help the Jews. It has to be because you understand, heart and soul, that we are all inextricably bound. We don’t need a savior. We need allies.”
― Jennifer Coburn, Cradles of the Reich

“Fear of dying young isn't an altogether bad thing. Sometimes it makes you try what you might otherwise delay.”
― Jennifer Coburn, We'll Always Have Paris: A Mother/Daughter Memoir

“Those who dismissed Hitler’s uprising as a ragtag insurrection weren’t laughing anymore.”
― Jennifer Coburn, The Girls of the Glimmer Factory

“Lack of panache, I silently corrected him. “I don’t know how you’d describe it, but there’s earnestness about you, Mona. There’s nothing frivolous about you.” They call it boring. Insipid. Vacuous. Dry. Dull. Plain. Vanilla minus the vanilla flavor. But thanks for trying to make it sound like an attribute. Now I feel as though I should schedule an appointment with a cosmetic surgeon for both a facelift and a personality implant.”
― Jennifer Coburn, Reinventing Mona

“This helped me a lot,” he said. What helped who a lot? I wondered as I stood beside the open door. “PFLAG?” Jason asked after I heard the sound of a book dropping on his desk. “Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. I heard you talking to the missus and … my brother was gay.”
― Jennifer Coburn, Brownie Points

“Anjoli had the look of a deer that was told that if it smiled hard enough, the oncoming truck would stop.”
― Jennifer Coburn, The Queen Gene

“I felt in Ann Arbor the same way I did in the city—like everything was happening and I was missing it all when I wasn’t there. I suppose there are several spots on earth where each one of us feels completely at home. For me, they are Ann Arbor,”
― Jennifer Coburn, Tales From The Crib

“The next morning, the thrush had cleared up almost completely. No pain. No swearing. No gnashing my teeth. I was fit for my own page in the nursing book. I was so proud of my new skill, I wanted to share it with everyone. I told my letter carrier about how my nipples were in top form again. He was thrilled for me, really. That day, I was such a show-off I had to resist the urge to lie down on the supermarket floor and squirt my milk into the air like fountains. I thought I had such a choice piece of entertainment, I imagined spending my spring afternoons in the park collecting tips in a cup for my milk-producing excellence.”
― Jennifer Coburn, Tales From The Crib

“was like a crystal bowl filled with warm kettle corn. But when you lifted it up and checked the bottom, you could see a layer of burnt, unpopped kernels. The kind that makes you flinch from the unexpected bitter taste. The kind that may cause you to chip a tooth.”
― Jennifer Coburn, The Queen Gene

“A life well-lived is a life filled with mistakes and stupid shit you should’ve never done.”
― Jennifer Coburn, Reinventing Mona

“Timing is a wonderful thing sometimes. It can save us from ourselves.”
― Jennifer Coburn, Tales From The Crib

“Changing yourself into who you think someone else wants is hurting yourself. It’s a rejection of who you are, and that’s toxic. You’re committing emotional suicide.” I”
― Jennifer Coburn, Reinventing Mona

“MFA program at the University of Michigan when we met.”
― Jennifer Coburn, Tales From The Crib

“Grammy always said that when a developer tells you that he builds elegant homes, it’s because he almost always throws together half-baked cookie cutter models of what twenty-five-year-old trophy brides deem tasteful. “Always consider it a tremendous service when a person tells you how honest he is,” she also said. “It’s a warning round. When they start talking about how honest they are, run. If you’re honest, you don’t need to talk about it. When you build elegant homes, you most certainly do not need to tout their elegance. If someone makes a point of telling you who he is, rather than showing you with his actions, you can bank”
― Jennifer Coburn, Reinventing Mona

“don’t want to be in a world where helping one another survive is remarkable.”
― Jennifer Coburn, Cradles of the Reich

“They always think if they married someone else, their lives would have turned out differently,”
― Jennifer Coburn, Reinventing Mona

“epileptically.”
― Jennifer Coburn, Reinventing Mona

“Ask any single parent whether they’d like an extra set of hands around the house and they’d take it.” They’d take it if it weren’t the set of hands belonging to the rat bastard who asked for a divorce the same day the pregnancy test read positive.”
― Jennifer Coburn, Tales From The Crib

“He interrupted. “No, Lisa, other families do not have sons who are Girl Scouts. I’m teaching that boy to fight,” Jason muttered to himself, “A gay, black Girl Scout. What the hell happened to this family? We were normal back in San Francisco.”
― Jennifer Coburn, Brownie Points

“What they don’t get is that if they hadn’t chosen their current partner, they would have wound up with the same guy wearing different pants,”
― Jennifer Coburn, Reinventing Mona