Jessica > Jessica's Quotes

“Then I understood I would never marry him. It's funny how one thing can make you realize something like that. One can be ready to give up the children one always wanted, one can be ready to withstand remarks about one's past, or one's clothes, but then—a tiny remark and the soul deflates and says: Oh.”
― Elizabeth Strout, My Name Is Lucy Barton

“Lonely was the first flavor I had tasted in my life, and it was always there, hidden inside the crevices of my mouth, reminding me.”
― Elizabeth Strout, My Name Is Lucy Barton

“I took myself—secretly, secretly—very seriously! I knew I was a writer. I didn’t know how hard it would be. But no one knows that; and that does not matter.)”
― Elizabeth Strout, My Name Is Lucy Barton

“Sarah Payne, the day she told us to go to the page without judgment, reminded us that we never knew, and never would know, what it would be like to understand another person fully.”
― Elizabeth Strout, My Name Is Lucy Barton

“I have sometimes been sad that Tennessee Williams wrote that line for Blanche DuBois, "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers." Many of us have been saved many times by the kindness of strangers, but after a while it sounds trite, like a bumper sticker. And that's what makes me sad, that a beautiful and true line comes to be used so often that it takes on the superficial sound of a bumper sticker.”
― Elizabeth Strout, My Name Is Lucy Barton

“It interests me how we find ways to feel superior to another person, another group of people. It happens everywhere, and all the time. Whatever we call it, I think it’s the lowest part of who we are, this need to find someone else to put down.”
― Elizabeth Strout, My Name Is Lucy Barton

“Oh, calamity!”
― Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies

“Every day I think, ‘Gosh, you look a bit tired today,’ and it’s just recently occurred to me that it’s not that I’m tired, it’s that this is the way I look now.”
― Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies

“I mean a fat, ugly man can still be funny and lovable and successful,” continued Jane. “But it’s like it’s the most shameful thing for a woman to be.” “But you weren’t, you’re not—” began Madeline. “Yes, OK, but so what if I was!” interrupted Jane. “What if I was! That’s my point. What if I was a bit overweight and not especially pretty? Why is that so terrible? So disgusting? Why is that the end of the world?”
― Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies

“It’s because a woman’s entire self-worth rests on her looks,” said Jane. “That’s why. It’s because we live in a beauty-obsessed society where the most important thing a woman can do is make herself attractive to men.”
― Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies

“Reading a novel was like returning to a once-beloved holiday destination.”
― Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies

“But every time she tried yoga she found herself silently chanting her own mantra: I’m so boooored, I’m so boooored.”
― Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies

“First kisses didn’t necessarily require darkness and alcohol, they could happen in the open air, with the sun warm on your face and everything around you honest and real and true.”
― Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies

“She’d swallowed it whole and pretended it meant nothing, and therefore it had come to mean everything.”
― Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies

“She’d never really believed in it before. Then, as she hit her late thirties, her body said, OK, you don’t believe in PMS? I’ll show you PMS. Get a load of this, bitch. Now, for one day every month, she had to fake everything: her basic humanity, her love for her children, her love for Ed. She’d once been appalled to hear of women claiming PMS as a defense for murder. Now she understood. She could happily murder someone today! In fact, she felt like there should be some sort of recognition for her remarkable strength of character that she didn’t.”
― Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies

“It was just so very surprising that the good-looking, worried man who had just offered her a cup of tea, and was right now working at his computer down the hallway, and who would come running if she called him, and who loved her with all of his strange heart, would in all probability one day kill her.”
― Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies

“Why did they all have to tread so very delicately around Celeste's money? It was like wealth was an embarrassing medical condition. It was the same with Celeste's beauty. Strangers gave Celeste the same furtive looks they gave to people with missing limbs, and if Madeline ever mentioned Celeste's looks, Celeste responded with something like shame. "Shhh," she'd say, looking around fearfully in case someone overheard. Everyone wanted to be rich and beautiful, but the truly rich and beautiful had to pretend they were just the same as everyone else. Oh, it was a funny old world.”
― Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies

“The sound of the children singing floating down from the second floor of the building always made her weep. She’d never believed in God, except when she heard children singing.”
― Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies

“But I feel ugly, because one man said it was so, and that made it so. It’s pathetic.”
― Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies

“It drove her to distraction the way women wanted to bond over self-hatred.”
― Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies

“Jane walked into the playground feeling a strange sense of calm. Perhaps she needed to learn from Madeline’s example. No more avoiding confrontation. March up to your critics and bloody well tell them what you think.”
― Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies

“but sometimes doing the wrong thing was also right.”
― Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies