Laura Hankin > Quotes

“I mean... There have been moments when I read something in a book that feels like it was written just for me. Like the author reached inside my brain, took all the thoughts I didn't know how to express, and put them into a perfect paragraph. And in those moments, I've felt so utterly connected to a person I didn't know that it made me think, 'Yes, the world can be hard, and people can be awful to each other. But there is also so much beauty in the fact that we can recognize each other like that.'" She diffled with her straw. "I want to be able to give that feeling to other people.”
― Laura Hankin, One-Star Romance

“Sometimes, to make something strong, we have to tear out the rot in the foundation and start again.”
― Laura Hankin, A Special Place for Women

“Why was there no fucking TrueDaddy? The answer was clear. Because men wouldn't fall for it. Not that they were smarter- Amara firmly believed she could trounce the average man in a battle of wits- but because they weren't primed from birth like women were, told that they could be anything they wanted to be while handicapped at every turn by invisible forces, told that they were more than just their looks while also culturally programmed to believe that their value was tied to their desirability. Men aged into silver foxes while women aged into obsolescence. And when you added in children, oh, that was when everything really went to shit. Because even though father stamped their children with their last names, the world didn't ask as much of them. No one really expected fathers to consider giving up their careers to put their children first, to stop managing a company and start managing a household. Women had to grapple with a choice that men never did while remaining uncomplaining and generous so that they didn't nag their husbands straight into the arms of uncomplicated lovers.”
― Laura Hankin, Happy & You Know It

“We are all so obsessed with protecting out child, aren't we?" "That's how we got into this mess in the first place. We want to paint a lovely picture that we hang over their window to block out how the world really works, to give them these lives. And to do that, we think we need to keep ourselves perfect too. But no mother in the history of the world has been able to protect her child forever. the world barges in through the front door eventually.”
― Laura Hankin, Happy & You Know It

“I understood that to be a woman in the world was to spend so much time trying to act the right way. Be loud enough, but not too loud. Stand up for yourself, but pleasantly. Beauty was everything, but you shouldn’t rely on your looks. Always, always I was trying to get it right, to find the valance, but here around this circle, naked but not sexualized, together we could flail and scream and open ourselves raw without worrying about anything else at all. We were powerful and free, and I felt like I had when I went skinny-dipping for the first time: I was moving through something larger than myself, but also I was part of it, no parries between us.”
― Laura Hankin, A Special Place for Women

“Sympathy is nice and necessary when it's fresh. But if you leave it out too long, it curdles like old milk.”
― Laura Hankin, A Special Place for Women

“Some wounds are too deep to heal. Some things, some people, can never be forgiven.”
― Laura Hankin, The Daydreams

“Well, she said she couldn't stay long because she had to feed Anais, and I asked if that was her dog, but no. It's her emotional support snake.”
― Laura Hankin, A Special Place for Women

“We all have stages in our lives that we must move on from and mourn.”
― Laura Hankin, The Daydreams

“Sometimes when you're in the middle of it, it's easy to forget that academia is not the center of the universe.”
― Laura Hankin, One-Star Romance

“Wealth isn't some marker of superiority. It's a matter of luck and circumstance, and those with power using it to keep everyone else down.”
― Laura Hankin, A Special Place for Women

“All in all, my body and I were like coworkers. I appreciated when it performed well, I got annoyed about all the skills it lacked, and I didn't want to have to see it on nights and weekends.”
― Laura Hankin, A Special Place for Women

“There is a special place in hell for women who don’t support other women. —Madeleine Albright”
― Laura Hankin, A Special Place for Women

“There are certain feelings that you don't believe are real until you feel them yourself.”
― Laura Hankin, The Daydreams

“What is life for, if not dancing?”
― Laura Hankin, One-Star Romance

“Maybe, over the course of even the best marriages, you acquired a collection of secrets that you walled off in a little section of your heart where your partner would never be allowed to go. And you did everything you could to keep the walled-off section small, to keep the secrets from slipping out of it and pervading all that was good and open and free in the rest of your heart, and you just made it work.”
― Laura Hankin, Happy and You Know It

“Fill my lungs up with the that sweet, sweet city smog and let me suffocate in a place with bodegas.”
― Laura Hankin, A Special Place for Women

“... grief is a sneaky bastard. It hides itself for long stretches, only to pop out stronger than ever.”
― Laura Hankin, The Daydreams

“You're having a baby.' They both spoke in whispers. Somehow the news felt so big that all they could do was whisper in the face of it. Like walking into a cathedral, reverent.”
― Laura Hankin, One-Star Romance

“Love—axis-spinning, all-consuming, eye-opening love—had stunted her intellectual agility. All her blood was flowing to her heart, none left for her brain.”
― Laura Hankin, One-Star Romance

“The truth is just that sometimes you think you're a good person, and then little by little, you justify your way into being a bad one.”
― Laura Hankin, Happy & You Know It

“There are certain feelings you don’t believe are real until you feel them yourself. Take anger so strong that you could kill someone. You cannot wrap your head around how a person could get to that place, and then something or someone overwhelms you with rage and murder starts to make sense.”
― Laura Hankin, The Daydreams

“After all, money was like bunnies - once you had a certain amount of hundreds in your wallet, they just kept multiplying. Either people respected you and gave you opportunities that led to more money, or you put it in the stock market, sat back and watched it give birth over and over again.”
― Laura Hankin, Happy & You Know It

“Still, there’s something about your first love. Some part of you, the part that longs for who you used to be, will always care too much about them. They will always be . . . charged, if you are lucky or unlucky enough to encounter them again.”
― Laura Hankin, The Daydreams

“Cancer didn't take only those who weren't willing to fight it. It was an indiscriminate monster. Rob knew that too, but sometimes you had to say things you don't fully believe.”
― Laura Hankin, One-Star Romance

“I understood that to be a woman in the world was to spend so much time trying to act the right way. Be loud enough, but not too loud. Stand up for yourself, but pleasantly. Beauty was everything, but you shouldn’t rely on your looks. Always, always I was trying to get it right, to find the balance, but here around this circle, naked but not sexualized, together we could flail and scream and open ourselves raw without worrying about anything else at
all.”
― Laura Hankin, A Special Place for Women

“Things weren't supposed to be perfect and manicured at this age, not when you were bravely pursuing what you loved despite the difficulty of it.”
― Laura Hankin, One-Star Romance

“Not everyone is lucky enough to love someone as infuriating and interesting and alive as Natalie Shapiro.”
― Laura Hankin, One-Star Romance

“Do you remember the kind of fear that you felt as a child, when you had the sense that anything was possible? Ghosts might be lingering in the shadows. A hand could reach out from underneath your bed and drag you down. Perhaps a vampire lurked in your attic, waiting for the moment when you were alone and defenseless to bare his fangs. As a grown woman, I had plenty to fear in the real world-a man walking too close behind me at
night, a man yelling hateful things in people’s faces on the subway, a man coming through my window or revealing his true colors or doing any number of things.”
― Laura Hankin, A Special Place for Women

“not”
― Laura Hankin, One-Star Romance