Quotes from The Nanny Diaries

Emma McLaughlin ·  306 pages

Rating: (336.4K votes)


“if you'e going to do something, darling, then do it all the way.”
― Emma McLaughlin, quote from The Nanny Diaries


“There are people in this home- human beings- drowning in their desire for you to look them in the eye. You made this family. And all you have to do is show up and like them. It's called 're-la-ting.' So get over whatever totally-absent-buying-your affection parenting that you received and get here, man- because this is your LIFE and you're just pissing it away!”
― Emma McLaughlin, quote from The Nanny Diaries


“I pause to catch my breath, looking around at all the toys he's paid for and never once enjoyed with his son.”
― Emma McLaughlin, quote from The Nanny Diaries


“And he doesn't care what you're wearing or what you've brought him. He just wants you there. Wanting him. And time is running out. He won't love you unconditionally that much longer. And soon he won't love you at all.”
― Emma McLaughlin, quote from The Nanny Diaries


“if you're going to do something darling, then do it all the way\

uncoordinated and enthusiastic. a lethal combination”
― Emma McLaughlin, quote from The Nanny Diaries



“But there is so much you can do with five children in a dark parking lot before you want to sell them.”
― Emma McLaughlin, quote from The Nanny Diaries


“There are people─ in your home─ human beings─ drowning in their desire for you to look them in the eye. You made this family. And all you have to do is to show up and like them. It's called 'relating'. So get over whatever totally-absent-buying-your-affection parenting that you received and get here, man─ because this is your LIFE and you're just pissing it away.”
― Emma McLaughlin, quote from The Nanny Diaries


About the author

Emma McLaughlin
Born place: in Elmira, New York, The United States
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Popular quotes

“The first time I was ever called ugly, I was thirteen. It was a rich friend of my brother Carlton's over to shoot guns in the field.
'Why you crying, girl?' Constantine asked me in the kitchen.
I told her what the boy had called me, tears streaming down my face.
'Well? Is you?'
I blinked, paused my crying. 'Is I what?'
'Now you look a here, Egenia'-because constantien was the only one who'd occasionally follow Mama's rule. 'Ugly live up on the inside. Ugly be a hurtful, mean person. Is you one a them peoples?'
'I don't know. I don't think so,' I sobbed.
Constantine sat down next to me, at the kitchen table. I heard the cracking of her swollen joints. She pressed her thumb hard in the palm of my hand, somthing we both knew meant Listen. Listen to me.
'Ever morning, until you dead in the ground, you gone have to make this decision.' Constantine was so close, I could see the blackness of her gums. 'You gone have to ask yourself, Am I gone believe what them fools say about me today?'
She kept her thumb pressed hard in my hand. I nodded that I understood. I was just smart enough to realize she meant white people. And even though I still felt miserable, and knew that I was, most likely, ugly, it was the first time she ever talked to me like I was something besides my mother's white child. All my life I'd been told what to believe about politics, coloreds, being a girl. But with Constantine's thumb pressed in my hand, I realized I actually had a choice in what I could believe.”
― Kathryn Stockett, quote from The Help


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― Audrey Niffenegger, quote from The Time Traveler's Wife


“Too many things on my mind, said Wilbur.
Well, said the goose, that's not my trouble. I have nothing at all on my mind, but I've too many things under my behind.”
― E.B. White, quote from Charlotte's Web


“Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, quote from The Great Gatsby


“Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It's splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.”
― L.M. Montgomery, quote from Anne of Green Gables


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