Diane Johnson > Quotes

“Laughter is the jam on the toast of life. It adds flavor, keeps it from being too dry, and makes it easier to swallow.”
― Diane Johnson

“Men are generally more law-abiding than women. Women have the feeling that since they didn't make the rules, the rules have nothing to do with them. ”
― Diane Johnson

“It didn't seem fair that you could not prevent being the object of other people's emotions, you were not safe from their hate--or from their love, for that matter. You were never safe from being invaded by their feelings when you wanted only to be rid of them, free, off, away.”
― Diane Johnson

“Statuettes of drunken sailors, velvet pictures of island maidens, plastic seashell lamps made in Taiwan. What contempt the people who think up souvenirs have for other people.”
― Diane Johnson

“Also, it must be kept in mind at all times that the women we are concerned with conducted their lives, had thoughts, went traveling, ate dinner, and fell in love while entirely encased beneath their gowns in the following articles of clothing: a chemise, a corset, a camisole over the corset, up to six petticoats—beginning with a short, stiff one, one or two flannel ones for warmth, a plain one and then some embroidered ones—a vest or undershirt, stockings, garters, and, depending on the decade, a whalebone crinoline or bustle. And all of these things were held on and together with strings, and tapes, and innumerable buttons and hooks.11 Whatever we are able to make of Mary Ellen’s adulterous behavior, we will not be able to excuse it on the grounds of impulse; there could hardly have been such a thing as an impulsive sexual irregularity for women so encumbered.”
― Diane Johnson, The True History of the First Mrs. Meredith and Other Lesser Lives

“The Novelist, afraid his ideas may be foolish, slyly puts them in the mouth of some other fool and reserves the right to disavow them.”
― Diane Johnson

“One is never as happy as one thinks, nor as unhappy as one hopes.”
― Diane Johnson, Le Divorce

“Misfortune prompts us to summon our utmost strength to oppose grief and recover tranquility, while prosperity hurries us away until we are overwhelmed by our passions. Queen Margot

Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue. La Rochefoucault

We promise according to our hopes; we perform according to our fears.

I sometimes wonder is the esprit, gaiety, intellectual seriousness and serious stylishness of the earlier period was the reflex of poverty and shared hardship.”
― Diane Johnson, Into a Paris Quartier: Reine Margot's Chapel and Other Haunts of St. Germain

“Reading is the solitary essential pastime to which all summer houses are peculiarly dedicated.

I became a foreigner. For myself, that is what a writer is - a man living on the other side of a frontier.”
― Diane Johnson, Flyover Lives: A Memoir

“Well, their piety is more evolved,” said Mrs. Pace. “In America we have only two forms, as Matthew Arnold said: the bitter and the smug. In France, it appears, there is a third type, the worldly.”
― Diane Johnson, Le Divorce

“Yet—some Frenchman had written—“absence diminishes commonplace passions and enhances great ones.”
― Diane Johnson, Le Divorce

“Noel lay stuck to the Naugahyde and apparently felt nothing. His back, soft and wasted, was not unlike Max's. Noel's was so feminine; Max's so dark and hairy - hairier than Noel's. It was dismal to have a hairy wife.”
― Diane Johnson, Burning

“You can only forgive a man if you don't love him.

One's countrymen are always a humiliation for the traveler, whatever the country.”
― Diane Johnson, L'Affaire

“To see the right thing to do and not to do it is cowardice.”
― Diane Johnson, Lorna Mott Comes Home

“If you did get divorced, would you go back to America?” I asked Roxy on the way home. “No, of course not,” she said vehemently. “Everything makes me happy here. Except, well, you know—the situation. But the buildings. The buses. I even love the pigeons with their little red feet. My heart goes out to the spindly ones. Some pigeons don’t thrive as well as others. Sometimes I drop a piece of my croissant for them. I try to give it to the spindly ones before the fat ones see. But people stare at you so outraged. Did you know they have a sports club where they actually catch the pigeons? Tammy de Bretteville told me about it. Then they let them out, old fat street pigeons, and as they flutter lethargically up, the French shoot them for target practice. That’s their idea of sport. I was struck dumb when I heard this. It wasn’t even for reducing the population of pigeons, which you could possibly understand. It’s some deficiency in sensibility.” She must be really depressed, I thought, to be raving on like this about pigeons. “It’s better than shooting people, like we do at home,” I pointed out.”
― Diane Johnson, Le Divorce

“It's actually Jane Austen who pushes Louisa Musgrove off the slippery rocks.”
― Diane Johnson, Writers on Writing: Collected Essays from The New York Times

“If WHO statistics were to be believed, the U.S. had the worst maternal mortality in the industrialized world.”
― Diane Johnson, Lorna Mott Comes Home

“Loyalty is a virtue everyone admires, especially the disloyal”
― Diane Johnson, Lorna Mott Comes Home

“He was a mesmerizing character, with deep-set gypsylike eyes, the longish hair, the poetic darkness.”
― Diane Johnson, Le Mariage