Emily Franklin > Quotes

“You did respond—your response was the worst kind—you did nothing.”
― Emily Franklin, Balancing Acts

“That's what the best par of life is, those days or minutes you can't ever frame or paint beforehand”
― Emily Franklin, The Other Half of Me

“it's funny how you can't exactly pick your crush. well, you can, but once it get hold of you, it's hard to shake off. ”
― Emily Franklin, The Other Half of Me

“or maybe love is summed up in moments - that day in the park, the time you had chinese food by candlelight, when the boy you liked left a message, finally, on your machine. maybe the telling of those moments is even better than the moments themselves. ”
― Emily Franklin, The Girls' Almanac: A Novel Exploring the Closeness and Distance of Female Friendship, Intimacy, and Women's Interconnected Lives

“it occured to her that kissing and being kissed were two different things. and being kissed by someone you've really wanted to is something else again.”
― Emily Franklin, The Girls' Almanac: A Novel Exploring the Closeness and Distance of Female Friendship, Intimacy, and Women's Interconnected Lives

“maybe one of the reasons i don't express myself as well as i want to is because inside, shoved way down into an unseen pit, i'm not sure of what i want. ”
― Emily Franklin, The Other Half of Me

“jenna had felt sexy-funny, like lucille ball with flour streaks on her face, a crumb-covered apron that didn't exactly flatter her, and yet nick had kissed her like a prom king falling for the reinvented girl in a movie. ”
― Emily Franklin, The Girls' Almanac: A Novel Exploring the Closeness and Distance of Female Friendship, Intimacy, and Women's Interconnected Lives

“There are umbrellas for rain. Parkas for blizzards. Storm cellars for tornadoes. But there's no protection for this.”
― Emily Franklin, Tessa Masterson Will Go to Prom

“i mean, heather said, our bodies are just these things that we float around in. it's not like they belong to anyone”
― Emily Franklin, The Girls' Almanac: A Novel Exploring the Closeness and Distance of Female Friendship, Intimacy, and Women's Interconnected Lives

“...art is not so much the memory of the truth (I picture here Joe, smiling). It’s the memory of what we wish those moments were.”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston

“she thinks about lying in here with alex, of the tangle of arms and rope, or lips. ”
― Emily Franklin, The Girls' Almanac: A Novel Exploring the Closeness and Distance of Female Friendship, Intimacy, and Women's Interconnected Lives

“I like flirting. But you misunderstand my intentions. You think it must only be about sex.” I shook my head. “Perhaps part is about desire, but tell me, Jack, is there anything more exciting than being understood? Did it occur to you that my ‘connections’ are more about that than a kiss or a dalliance? I see these men for all that they are.”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston

“The task of any good cook, of any parent, is to be present- in the kitchen and out. To taste all the items, absorb each child's day, all those moments, and form them into the day's meals.”
― Emily Franklin, Too Many Cooks: Kitchen Adventures with 1 Mom, 4 Kids, and 102 Recipes

“How lucky men are not to have to choose between being serious and fun, I'd said. Julia hadn't known what I meant. She had an ability I did not: she could simply enjoy a moment, where I found myself part in it and part studying it.”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston

“I would like people⁠—particularly women⁠—to know that sometimes we are working on a goal and are not able for many reasons to speak that goal aloud. Sometimes it is hidden even from ourselves.”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston

“she uncurls danny's small fists and clasps his hand to hers and notices the way even in his sleep his fingers seem to know their way around hers; their hands together form their own organ, or an x, like on a map that insists you are here. ”
― Emily Franklin, The Girls' Almanac: A Novel Exploring the Closeness and Distance of Female Friendship, Intimacy, and Women's Interconnected Lives

“lucy went along with her mother because ginny wanted her to, because lucy felt it was what girls did with their mothers - watch in silence as, under the cones of dryers, mothers fell out of listening range and into the distance. ”
― Emily Franklin, The Girls' Almanac: A Novel Exploring the Closeness and Distance of Female Friendship, Intimacy, and Women's Interconnected Lives

“he can see alice in wet leaves, first as kids, when they'd jump in them, then as teenagers, when she would lie on the cold ground and he'd cover her with red, orange, and yellow fallen leaves and he would wait for her, wait for her with his heart racing, hoping he hadn't covered her up so much she couldn't jump up, bringing them both to action. ”
― Emily Franklin, The Girls' Almanac: A Novel Exploring the Closeness and Distance of Female Friendship, Intimacy, and Women's Interconnected Lives

“Perhaps this was the point of travel, keeping bits of daily life to ground us while feeling also altogether stretched at the wideness of the world.”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston

“at keltner's deli, everything was somehow neutralized. they were girls. they were girls with odd names who smoked after school together and maybe sometimes alone.”
― Emily Franklin, The Girls' Almanac: A Novel Exploring the Closeness and Distance of Female Friendship, Intimacy, and Women's Interconnected Lives

“It is still possible, after all, to forge a covenant that binds us not to God in obedience but to one another in mercy. We need only choose, this year, to keep the flame lit...”
― Emily Franklin, How to Spell Chanukah...and Other Holiday Dilemmas: 18 Writers Celebrate 8 Nights of Lights

“That's what being Jewish is: summoning the means to question who you are and how you have behaved. Have you remained alight in the darkness of cruel wishes,..? Have you forgiven? Have you lived up to the standards of your one and only heart?”
― Emily Franklin, How to Spell Chanukah and Other Holiday Dilemmas.

“Beautiful people can afford a touch of cruelty.”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston

“Subordination of desire . . . if women are encouraged to want less, to taste less, we will accept less. And loathe ourselves for the very act of wanting.”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston

“We waited a moment so as not to intrude, which was fine for Jack—men may stand and look around the room and are assumed to be thinking, perhaps measuring the room's dimensions. But women? Women stand and look foolish, as though we are lost. Or, in my view, as though we are somehow always in the wrong place.”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston

“I live on the very edge of my charm".”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston

“I noticed an awkward feeling growing daily—a racing heart, an emotional seasickness I wished to express but couldn't. It was as though the city of Boston, the state of Massachusetts, the country, the globe had so much for me to see and to know and yet I knew only about drawing rooms and mirrors. I did not entirely like my reflection in them.”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston

“she thought about being held to the woman's chest, and lying there hair-smoothed and quiet until she felt she'd found home. ”
― Emily Franklin, The Girls' Almanac: A Novel Exploring the Closeness and Distance of Female Friendship, Intimacy, and Women's Interconnected Lives

“jenna preferred to think of alice that way - like an art project, colors swirling inside her, rather than of how sick she was. ”
― Emily Franklin, The Girls' Almanac: A Novel Exploring the Closeness and Distance of Female Friendship, Intimacy, and Women's Interconnected Lives

“We are always ourselves. We are all born at the wrong time, Isabella. It's up to each to fashion a life out of the time period in which we're dropped.”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston