Quotes from Laurie Frankel

Parent time is magic: downtempo and supersonic all at once, witch's time, sorcerer hours. Suddenly, while you aren't paying attention, everything's changed.

But happy is harder than it sounds,

She wasn't sure that parenting ever qualified as brave. Or maybe it always did. Because it's not like you got a choice.

Parenthood is like that...the harder the choice, the less likely any of the options are good ones

It's not a book club if there isn't wine.

But if you made yourself up, you got to be exactly who you knew yourself to be.

That's what all stories want. They want to get out, get told, get heard. Otherwise, what's the point of stories?

It's your story, sweetheart. Not just your story to pass on. Your story to make up as well. Over time, stories change; they shift; they become something new but with elements of the original and elements of what's to come.

It happens to everyone," she assured Princess Stephanie. "It does?" Stephanie doubted it. "Sure. Everyone's someone else sometimes. Everyone transforms. Maybe not in quite the same way as you, but that's sort of the point. The curse - if you will - it happens to everyone, but not to any two people in the same way. And no one likes it, no matter who's waiting inside.

What was clear, however, was that the Buddha was born male, then cut off all his hair one day and got enlightened, then ended up looking like a girl. And as if that weren't enough, the Buddha also seemed to feel that even things as unalterable as bodies were temporary, and what mattered was if you were good and honest, and forgiveness solved everything. That was how, whatever else they were, Claude and Poppy became Buddhists for life.

Because when a little girl wants to wear jeans and play soccer, her parents are thrilled, but when a little boy wants to wear a dress and play dolls, his parents send him to therapy and enroll him in a study. We just don't know yet the long-term effects on these kids of puberty suppression.

That is the other thing novelist do. We imagine the world we hope for and endeavor, with the greatest power we have, to bring that world into being.

just to be with you. That's what you do for me. You simply outweigh everything else. That's how love should be, I guess. I guess, that's what love means.

You learn over lifetimes. You keep try. You will find middle way to be. This life. Next. You find your way.

Just being yourself never worked, but if you made yourself up, you got to be exactly who you knew yourself to be.

whose grandmotherly advice was, "Fuck the bastards,

Oh the things that hide secretly in our children, lying in wait, doing untold damage, yearning to be free. Alarming us beyond all measure.

Find who's fun and smart and safe, and stick with them.

One day at a time. One foot in front of the other. All for one.

I've lived life. I know what's important. I've seen it all by now. You think he's the first boy I ever saw in a bikini? He's not. You think your generation invented kids who are different?

It is not enough to be loved by your mother. It is a good start, and you wouldn't want to do without, and it helps, but is not enough. You need also the love of your community, the love of friends and admirers, the love of strangers who don't know you but still wish you well, the love that comes from passion and from commitment and from someone who will never, never betray you and not just because they're related to you. You need more love. We all need more love.

No one will know who you're supposed to be," Ben warned. "No one ever does," said Claude.

If you wrote your own characters, they didn't disappoint you like real people did.

This is how you cook a novel. Some made up, some real life, all true.