Helen Hooven Santmyer · 1184 pages
Rating: (11.3K votes)
“In a way, looking back, it seemed a long, long time since she had been eighteen, but in another way her memories were so clear and vivid that it seemed like yesterday. Time was an accordion, all the air squeezed out of it as you grew old. And how strange that in your mind you did not feel any older. You were the same person, but where had the years gone?”
― Helen Hooven Santmyer, quote from And Ladies of the Club
“But surely, if you trust God, you can believe the bad moments pass, and the good memories are worth enough.”
― Helen Hooven Santmyer, quote from And Ladies of the Club
“She was moved to a profound but pleasurable melancholy by the evidence that human life is brief and long survived by the material things it had believed itself to possess.”
― Helen Hooven Santmyer, quote from And Ladies of the Club
“But Calvinists have never been pacifists: they have always been all too ready for a fight.”
― Helen Hooven Santmyer, quote from And Ladies of the Club
“When we get presidents with brains it's purely by accident. Who was ever selected for his brains? We choose them for other qualities, or because they can be elected.”
― Helen Hooven Santmyer, quote from And Ladies of the Club
“Oh, how I regret not having worn a bikini for the entire year I was twenty-six. If anyone young is reading this, go, right this minute, put on a bikini, and don't take it off until you're thirty-four.”
― Nora Ephron, quote from I Feel Bad about My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman
“Shamash grant your wish.
What your mouth has said, may your eyes see.
May he open for you the barred path,
unclose the road for your footsteps,
unlock the mountain for your foot.
May the night give you things that please you,
and may Lugalbanda stand beside you
and satisfy your wish.
May you be granted your wish as a child is.”
― quote from The Epic of Gilgamesh
“I have googled 'how long does heartbreak last?' The result more popular than that was 'how long does heartburn last?' This implies people suffer from heartburn more than they do heartbreak which is a good thing because heartbreak sucks way fucking more than acid reflux ever could.”
― quote from It
“Women endure the labor of childbirth and men send themselves to war! But I gave birth to eight children and never once did I cry like I saw some of those men out there before they even fired their first shot! I think it has something to do with the unnaturalness of killing compared to the naturalness of giving birth.”
― Ana Castillo, quote from So Far from God
“We may love men and we may live with men, but some of them have said stupendously inaccurate things about us, our bodies, and our psyches.”
― Natalie Angier, quote from Woman: An Intimate Geography
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