J. Ryan Stradal > Quotes

“After decades away from the Midwest, she’d forgotten that bewildering generosity was a common regional tic.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“When Lars first held her, his heart melted over her like butter on warm bread, and he would never get it back. When mother and baby were asleep in the hospital room, he went out to the parking lot, sat in his Dodge Omni, and cried like a man who had never wanted anything in his life until now.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“When you see a man falling off a ladder above you, Edith believed, you don't envision your arms breaking. You just hold them out.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, The Lager Queen of Minnesota

“It made hot girls forget you were a dork, which is the point of all music.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“Her mother told her once that the nicest thing you can do for someone is be happy to see them,”
― J. Ryan Stradal, The Lager Queen of Minnesota

“Where did you source your ingredients from?” one of them asked. “Are they local?” “Yeah,” Pat said, “they’re from the store about a mile from my house.” One of the girls behind the table laughed. “Sorry,” she said.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“Why? So you can still qualify for assistance? Your family is gaming the system?"

"No." Diana had always hated when people said this about her family. The bosses who made her dad list a payroll company as his employer, they gamed the system. The assholes who convinced her parents to take out both a second mortgage and a HELOC in 2006 gamed the system. The employers who would never give Edith enough hours for benefits gamed the system. But ask a lot of people, and they'd tell you it's people like her grandma who game the system. They'd tell you that an old woman who's worked hard every day of her life and still struggles to get by is a malignant vacuum for their personal tax dollars, and a blight on their lives as free Americans. "We're just trying to live.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, The Lager Queen of Minnesota

“Her mom carefully selected her memories to reflect her established opinions, and it turned her mind into a bowl of lettuce she believed was a salad.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, The Lager Queen of Minnesota

“Her grief was a forest with no trails, and she couldn’t guess how long her heart would walk through it, as her body walked other places.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, The Lager Queen of Minnesota

“Well, the vast majority of people don't steal to get ahead. A lot of people work their way up from nothing without stealing."

"I don't think a lot of people work their way up from nothing, ever. People like you want to believe it happens all the time. But it really doesn't.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, The Lager Queen of Minnesota

“She'd heard enough regrets in her lifetime to know that dreams don't always die because of something terrible, but more often because of something that's merely acceptable.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

“Maureen O'Brien's Bakery Lingo: A Partial Glossary
• 9 donuts - A shutout
• 2 croissants - A full moon
• 3 croissants - A ménage à trois
• 4 bear claws - Full smokey
• 2 bear claws - Half smokey
• The last one of any item - The gift of the Magi
• A baker's dozen of doughnut holes - a PG-13
• Anything in the unlikely quantity of 36 or a lot of something - A Wu-Tang
• Blueberry muffin - Chubby Checker
• Bran muffin - Warren G the regulator
• Any customer who left no tip - A libertarian
• Any customer who only tipped the coins from their change - A couch shaker
• Any person who requested a substitution - Master and demander
• Any person who requested TWO substitutions - Demander in chief
• Any person who requested MORE than two substitutions - The new executive chef

and finally....

• Any vegan customer - A Morrissey”
― J. Ryan Stradal, The Lager Queen of Minnesota

“Even though she had an overbite and the shakes, she was six feet tall and beautiful, and not like a statue or a perfume advertisement, but in a realistic way, like how a truck or a pizza is beautiful at the moment you want it most.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“People here liked to say they rooted for the underdog, but some of them got real quiet when the underdog was different from them.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

“Money allows people to survive their mistakes, she knew from having observed that phenomenon from a distance, and people like her were fucked.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, The Lager Queen of Minnesota

“She suddenly felt sorry for these people, for perverting the food of their childhood, the food of their mothers and grandmothers, and rejecting its unconditional love in favor of what? What? Pat did not understand.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“Yes, he just wanted her to want to be a mom, in the same way that he felt, with all of his blood, that he was a dad first, and everything else in the world an obscure, unfathomably distant second.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“What an honor to live in a part of the world that loves good old-fashioned baking.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“She’s told me that even though you won’t meet her tonight, she’s telling you her life story through the ingredients in this meal, and although you won’t shake her hand, you’ve shared her heart. Now please, continue eating and drinking, and thank you again.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“And she would pray for guidance, but she wouldn’t ask the Lord forgiveness for swearing at her husband. That was gonna stand for now.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“It occurred to Diana just then that death doesn’t happen all at once. The public death is just the beginning, and the rest takes as long as it has to, in private bits and pieces, without any warning, schedule, or validation.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, The Lager Queen of Minnesota

“...but she wouldn’t leave the legacy she desired simply through prideful public displays, like some men did. There were advantages to a low profile. It was like a man to scratch his name on the banister of history, but Helen had come to believe that it was better to be the stairs.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, The Lager Queen of Minnesota

“already thinking about the good and the bad and the deep human necessity of it all, and how anybody ever got anything done without family, and how someone could give that up in the amount of time it takes to seal an envelope, with the same saliva once used to seal a marriage.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“She hated those boys and knew that they were stupid and hence their opinions were baseless and the impact of their lives on the planet would be measured only in undifferentiated emissions of methane and nitrates . . . but still.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“...have a house without a pie, be ashamed until you die.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“Write thank-you notes,” Frank said. “Thank-you notes are the grease on society’s bearings.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, The Lager Queen of Minnesota

“Cynthia was so furious that evening, she opened a single-vineyard Merlot from Stag’s Leap that she’d been saving, and paired it with a bowl of macaroni and cheese from a box.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“wavering. She was not raised to confront people or defend herself in a confrontation; she was raised to appease, to mollify, to calm, to tuck little monsters in at night, to apologize for things she screwed up without realizing, to forgive, to sweeten, and her bars, her bars did that for the world, they were her I’m Sorry, they were her Like Me, they were her Love Freely Given.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“Ned had no clue how any parent could live a life without regret. Like most parents, he just had to choose which regrets he could live with.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

“She was not raised to confront people or defend herself in a confrontation; she was raised to appease, to mollify, to calm, to tuck little monsters in at night, to apologize for things she screwed up without realizing, to forgive, to sweeten, and her bars, her bars did that for the world, they were her I’m Sorry, they were her Like Me, they were her Love Freely Given.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest