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If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are halfway through.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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A man takes care of his house, and a man takes care of his tools.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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really? How many times had I heard my husband
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Jennifer Weiner |
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As long as people can still surprise you, it means you're not dead.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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Evian
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Jennifer Weiner |
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c269af5
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Rachel
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Jennifer Weiner |
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A body was just a body, just a vessel for her soul, and
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Jennifer Weiner |
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Someone had come in and mopped the floor, and the disinfectant smell was
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Jennifer Weiner |
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fluttered
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Jennifer Weiner |
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Sometimes - more often than not - he thought that Rachel and her classmates were just playing at being caring and open-minded, at noticing that there was a world wider than them, their college, their peers. They'd experience poverty in two-hour chunks twice a month. like it was a movie they were going to see or a TV show they were watching, something they'd click off or walk out of when it was done, something they sat through just so they c..
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Jennifer Weiner |
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It was as if real life had been canceled for the day.
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september-11
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Jennifer Weiner |
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my chest. All I'd wanted was for someone to be happy for me--happy with me, straight-up happy, not happy with questions, or happy with reservations, or happy but confused, or not happy at all . . . and there was no one in my life, including my husband, who fit the bill.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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You fell into your life, the same way I fell into mine.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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Things happen, and you can't make them un-happen. You don't get do-overs, you can't roll back the clock, and the only thing you can change, and the only thing that does any good to worry about, is how you let them affect you.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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wrathful old guy with a long white beard who was big on testing
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Jennifer Weiner |
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had become an EST instructor, which made both of them laugh.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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plenty of them, including her beloved sorors, were the kind of blinkered, privileged, entitled assholes who'd go sailing through life, assuming that their hard work, not their privilege, was what ensured them their good jobs, good schools, nice houses, and pricy vacations. Born on third base and think they hit a triple, his mom used to say,
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Jennifer Weiner |
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Why would you want to spend your money to go to countries where the people are so poor that they'd do anything to come over here?
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Jennifer Weiner |
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There would be menus, offered today by a girl
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Jennifer Weiner |
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I know I'll never get every single thing I dreamed of. I'll never be thin. I'll never win a Pulitzer or even, probably, the pie-baking contest at the Agriculture Fair in Truro every August (because I think the judges are biased against summer people, but that's another story). I will never get a do-over on my first marriage, or on my older daughter's infancy; I'll never get to not be divorced. I will never give birth again, and neither of m..
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Jennifer Weiner |
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and my father together had gently
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Jennifer Weiner |
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Inadequacy and impostor syndrome are painful. They're also great motivators.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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a concentration of young people who wanted to open their minds,
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Jennifer Weiner |
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She couldn't imagine not being a mother. She was happy and fulfilled. Or, at least, she was happy enough, fulfilled enough.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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Jo inhaled slowly, trying to think of all the time she'd had with her granddaughters, and not everything that she'd miss.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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grabbing for the last loaf of bread or gallon of milk or four-pack of toilet paper, as if everyone's snow-day plans included French toast and diarrhea.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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My parents aren't cruel to them. They pay them well. It's more that they treat them like they're pets.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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We lose ourselves," she repeated, forming each word with care, "but we find our way back." Wasn't that the story of her life?"
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Jennifer Weiner |
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You make the wrong choices, you make mistakes, you disappear for a decade, you marry the wrong man. You get hurt. You lose sight of who you are, or of who you want to be, and then you remember, and if you're lucky you have sisters or friends who remind you when you forget your best intentions. You come back to yourself, again and again. You try, and fail, and try again, and fail again. She
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Jennifer Weiner |
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96182ce
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Anger surged inside her, and Bethie tried to push it aside. I could have this, if I wanted it, she told herself. She could starve herself thin again, cut her hair, find a guy, buy a little house in a neighborhood full of identical little houses. She could have everything Barbara had, everything her sister had, only she didn't want it, not any of it.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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She wished she'd spent more time teaching her girls that women should forgive themselves, showing them how to take care of themselves with kindness. The world was hard enough, would beat them up enough without them adding to the pain.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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8f5e006
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You make the wrong choices, you make mistakes, you disappear for a decade, you marry the wrong man. You get hurt. You lose sight of who you are, or of who you want to be, and then you remember, and if you're lucky you have sisters or friends who remind you when you forget your best intentions. You come back to yourself, again and again. You try, and fail, and try again, and fail again.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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a white headband in her curled and sprayed hair.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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The first time around, she'd done the surgeries, the radiation, the chemotherapy. She'd lost her hair, lost her appetite and her energy, lost her left breast and six months of her life.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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Misses everything," Lila said, and gave the faintest smile. "It's like a joke. Like, there should be a Mister Everything somewhere."
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Jennifer Weiner |
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On the best days, there'd be a new package of margarine, and Bethie would be allowed to break the capsule of yellow dye and squish it all around until all the margarine was yellow-colored.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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She'd lost her taste for fiction. Sometimes she thought it was because spending even a few hours in an imaginary world would make it too tempting for her to consider other versions of her own story, other ways it could have unfolded. A different ending, a true happily-ever-after.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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Bubbe and Zayde were old and small and wrinkly,
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Jennifer Weiner |
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She hoped that things had changed, but she knew that they hadn't changed enough. All the demonstrations, all the consciousness-raising, all the protests, all the pickets, all the books she'd read, all the conversations she'd had, all the ballots she'd cast, all the work and here they were, still.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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First of all, it's got a million calories.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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b7e3cbf
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This wasn't the life she signed up for.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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the clerk
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Jennifer Weiner |
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Girls today, Judy Pressman had told her. They act like they're the first ones to have done any of this. They've got to reinvent the wheel, and make everything ten times harder than it has to be.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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I watched other kids and tried to figure out what made me different. Was it their clothes, their expressions, their hair? Was it the TV shows they talked about, the songs they sang, the way they stood with their hands in their pockets and their JanSport backpacks dangling from just one shoulder? How did some girls know, without being told, which boys to talk to and which to avoid? Why was Andrea Freeh, who was very heavy, popular with girls..
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Jennifer Weiner |