Karin Tanabe > Quotes

“A man who was not my husband, and would never be my husband, because he had no prospects or common sense. That was the best kind of man to have attached to you in a subway.”
― Karin Tanabe, A Woman of Intelligence

“I want to sleep next to you and listen to you exist.”
― Karin Tanabe, The Gilded Years

“Brains are more effective than beauty. Only the world tries to make women forget it. They don't want us to be too smart ... They're scared that if they encourage it, we'll end up more intelligent than the men. With the secret being ... that we already are.”
― Karin Tanabe, A Hundred Suns

“I like you because you’re nothing like Daisy and Rose and Violet and all the other women my mother has tried to set me up with who were named after flowers yet have no roots, just petals that will wilt fast. Your petals are going to last.”
― Karin Tanabe, A Woman of Intelligence

“I am a very small dot in this world. My actions are of little significance. But put together with the actions of many, they could have great significance. I want to move the country in the right direction. Then when I’m terribly old and terribly unimportant, I can say that I walked the right path.”
― Karin Tanabe, A Woman of Intelligence

“Trust me, you are far luckier than I was. I was taught that the only reason to better myself was so that I might marry a remarkable man. No one told me to be remarkable myself.”
― Karin Tanabe, The Diplomat's Daughter

“Why shouldn’t a woman be liberated? Men are lazy, complacent dickheads, because power corrupts them early and they think they should get it all free and easy. Women are the opposite. Usually.”
― Karin Tanabe, The Sunset Crowd

“The change was electrifying, like taking a long, hot bath after years of lukewarm showers.”
― Karin Tanabe, A Woman of Intelligence

“She watched the world in front of her, the horizon line now impossible to discern, and thought that even when men were trying their best to become monsters, nature refused to give in. What was beyond her couldn’t be easily altered by human stupidity.”
― Karin Tanabe, The Diplomat's Daughter

“to carry the ribbons from”
― Karin Tanabe, The Gilded Years

“I could see the entire city, from Harlem to Battery Park, the steam and heat, the limestone and concrete.”
― Karin Tanabe, A Woman of Intelligence

“I had not become a monster; I'd become a stranger”
― Karin Tanabe, A Woman of Intelligence

“America is a country with open arms, but that’s only true as long as the color of your arms is white. If they’re not, then simply staying employed and alive in this country is a battle.”
― Karin Tanabe, A Woman of Intelligence

“In my world, anything that isn't impossible is possible.”
― Karin Tanabe, A Woman of Intelligence

“Champagne always washed out, anyway.”
― Karin Tanabe, The Sunset Crowd

“I hadn’t yet learned that teenage girls do far too much apologizing. For breathing, for existing, for inspiring lurid thoughts, for having their own lurid thoughts, for wanting their own lives.”
― Karin Tanabe, The Sunset Crowd

“ready to turn up the charm and have one of those get-to-know-you conversations that women have where they’re sniffing the other out to see if they should lunch together, drink together, or never see each other again.”
― Karin Tanabe, The Sunset Crowd

“The East Coast forces sports on their young!”
― Karin Tanabe, The Sunset Crowd

“think you need to stop counting the hours of what could have been, and start living in the here and now.”
― Karin Tanabe, The Sunset Crowd

“They were not the saviors she always thought they were. They were just women, who had not acted like heroes when they could have.”
― Karin Tanabe, The Sunset Crowd

“I suppose when you’re in the highest echelons of beauty, you really are happy when other people look spectacular.”
― Karin Tanabe, The Sunset Crowd

“If women aren’t behind the camera, every picture of a woman will be through the eyes of a man. That can’t be our future.” I nodded. “I know. Even if it’s very fucked up. This world and our place in it.”
― Karin Tanabe, The Sunset Crowd

“Turner Wells. I repeated the name in my head a few times. It felt like one that had been carefully inscribed on birth certificates for generations.”
― Karin Tanabe, A Woman of Intelligence

“Who cared if I flamed out my insides? The world was stacked against women anyway.”
― Karin Tanabe, The Sunset Crowd

“I wouldn’t have made it in any other era,” I said honestly. “I would have been drowned by Puritans when I turned fourteen.” “All the good ones would have been.”
― Karin Tanabe, The Sunset Crowd

“It’s true that there was something wonderful about being a woman who never felt alone but got to live alone.”
― Karin Tanabe, The Sunset Crowd

“But all the while they’re seething with jealousy that the Star Wars thing is striking gold when it’s only been out a week. I mean, there are giant talking stuffed animals in it with guns and lasers. Robots that look like trash cans. But okay. This is what the people want. Fine.”
― Karin Tanabe, The Sunset Crowd

“Why does anyone lie in this town? She saw a good thing. And she wants to be close to it. But that means that other people need to move farther away.”
― Karin Tanabe, The Sunset Crowd

“I’m telling you now, long before I should, that I think you’re the perfect person for the job.”
― Karin Tanabe, A Woman of Intelligence

“Vain men were as appealing as cheap alcohol.”
― Karin Tanabe, The Sunset Crowd