Quotes from Laurie Frankel

Date someone who sleeps instead, someone who thinks slowly and deeply and talks in words that don't need to be memorized from flash cards.

Cranial neuralgia due to continuous stimulation of cutaneous nerves.

Part of dedicating your life to studying literature is realizing that storytelling is more than just make-believe and that make-believe is far more important that we all pretend -- make believe -- it is. One way or another books tell the stories of their readers. But telling our lives is not the same as shaping them, whittling them away. Suddenly Jill had lost control. Her books had taken over and were in charge.

Description of reading Lord of the Flies for school: It is only 208 pages, I have already read it, and it is not very interesting. It is by William Golding who won an award for showing that boys are mean and badly behaved, even somewhere nice like the beach. This seems like something anyone in the entire world who has ever met a boy could tell you, but they gave William Golding a Nobel Prize for it.

Two's description of reading Lord of the Flies for school: It is only 208 pages, I have already read it, and it is not very interesting. It is by William Golding who won an award for showing that boys are mean and badly behaved, even somewhere nice like the beach. This seems like something anyone in the entire world who has ever met a boy could tell you, but they gave William Golding a Nobel Prize for it.

We all choose the terms of the desperate bargains we make with the powers that may be, which baseless beliefs and decaying wisdoms we cling to, and which we discard as superstition or sorcery or the ravings of misguided zealots. Which is to say: it may not make sense all the way, but it makes sense enough.

Because you know what's even better than happy endings?" "What?" "Happy middles.

Bedtime stories were a group activity. And because showing the pictures all around to everyone involved a great deal of squirming and shoving and pinching and pushing and get-outta-my-ways and he-farted-on-mes and you-got-to-look-longer-than-I-dids, Penn often resorted to telling stories rather than reading them. He had a magic book he read from. It was an empty spiral notebook. He showed the boys it was blank so that there was no clamoring to see. And then he read it to them. Like magic.

if he's disappearing from the world, that's too high a price to pay for fitting in.

That's what all stories want. They want to get out, get told, get heard. Otherwise, what's the point of stories? They want to help little boys go to sleep. They want to help stubborn mamas fall in love with dads. They want to teach people things and make them laugh and cry.

But if you went back to wearing pants,' said Roo, 'you could retire ten years earlier.

When it was their turn to cook, she and Penn made elaborate, delicate dishes, too rich, too complicated, too expensive to waste on the everyday, to waste on the kids. They used their good china. They drank expensive wine.

firm believer in knowing people by knowing what they read, holding their favorite words in your mouth, running curious fingers along the spines of their books.

If you give all your worry to one thing, soon you'll realize that's way too much and worry about it less, and you'll feel more in control of it for keeping it at the front of your mind, and that will help you worry less

It's nice when people have needs you can meet.

Poems are surmountable. They have rhymes and rhythms to help you make meaning. They're short enough. . . to read and reread until you've made some sense of them. Short stories are a different ballgame. You read them and understand the words completely. You know what happens in each sentence. You follow the dialogue and action. at the end, you know exactly what's happened. And also you have no idea.

You have to tell. It can't be a secret. Secrets make everyone alone.

He knew what people wanted in a mate. All of them. Every one. So far as Sam could tell they may have found it in the damnedest places but everyone wanted the same things in a partner. Kind. Funny. Hot. Fun. Smart. And totally in love.

It's a good thing people's needs don't all arise at the same time; otherwise we wouldn't be able to meet them all. When you left Wisconsin, it was Poppy's turn. Roo's is coming.

One thing that is good about librarians is they listen to what you need and want and think of a way to help you which sometimes is by ignoring what you need and want. Maybe they do not have the book you requested because their library is nothing but leftovers. Or maybe what you requested is wrong-people often are, even smart people who read-but it is okay because librarians have witchlike librarian magic to pick the right book for you

I like labels because they mean organized and order and control and correct." "Sometimes they do. And sometimes they just give you the illusion of those things. Giving something a label and putting it in a box makes you feel like you've understood it and accounted for it and can keep track of it, and that's great for things like paperwork or books, but sometimes things get mislabeled or misfiled, and then they get misunderstood or misaccounted for.

I had to remember about open, blind, knowing, unreserved, unambiguous, unconditional love—naked love—before any of it could make sense again. I had to find it the many places it hid, drag it out in the open and wrap it all around me,

So the intent was clearly focused: friendship, laughter, food.

should be obvious—stupid people need to read books in order to get smarter, but unfortunately people who like books are usually smart already, and stupid people do not read. Maybe this is tragic irony, or maybe cause and effect. I do not know. What I do