Top 120 Laurie Frankel Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 2 of 3

51. “Bedtime could only be followed by TV. Or drinking.”

— Laurie Frankel

52. “Find who’s fun and smart and safe, and stick with them.”

— Laurie Frankel

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

— Laurie Frankel

54. “Mistake good because you learn, you fix.” “I don’t know how,” said Rosie. “Middle way.” “At home, there is no middle way. You’re male or you’re female. There’s no in between. You conform or you hide. You conform or you’re wrong. If you dress like a girl, then you have to be a girl, all girl, and if any part of you’s not, that’s not okay.” “Not just middle way between male and female. Middle way of being. Middle way of living with what is hard and who do not accept you.”

— Laurie Frankel

55. “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.”

— Laurie Frankel

56. “If you wrote your own characters, they didn’t disappoint you like real people did.”

— Laurie Frankel

57. “Claude’s kindergarten was full-day, six whole hours of sitting quietly and following rules and being away from home where someone – everyone – loved him best of all.”

— Laurie Frankel

58. “I just feel a little bit sad. Sad isn’t bleeding. Sad is okay.”

— Laurie Frankel

59. “Some sadness has no remedy. Some sadness you can’t make better.”

— Laurie Frankel

60. “A mom at a PTA meeting the year before had taken Rosie aside to advise her not to tack condoms to a bulletin board next to the bed, no matter how convenient a storage solution that seemed, a lesson she confessed, nodding at a first-grader in the corner licking paste off his fingers, she had learned the hard way.”

— Laurie Frankel

61. “Parent time is like fairy time but real. It is magic without pixie dust and spells. It defies physics without bending the laws of time and space.”

— Laurie Frankel

62. “It was like when your car spins out on an icy road, and your senses turn up so high that time seems to slow because you notice everything, and you just sit in your spinning car waiting, waiting to see if you’re, going to die. He couldn’t loos at her because every sense and every fraction of a moment and every atom of his body was being in love with her. It was weird.”

— Laurie Frankel

63. “As I have said – and as 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.”

— Laurie Frankel

64. “Having children, helping people, making art, inventing anything, leading the way, tackling the world’s problems, overcoming your own. I don’t know. Not much of what I value in our lives is easy.”

— Laurie Frankel

65. “Just because it’s made up, doesn’t mean it isn’t.”

— Laurie Frankel

66. “Our road trip makes me see that needing help doesn’t mean there aren’t other places to get it besides home, other people who can provide it besides family, that having limits doesn’t mean I cannot – must not, maybe – bewitch and bewilder, range far and wander wide and wild. For home is like black holes – no matter how small, no matter how humble, they capture everything in range and trap it inside. The only way to escape their draw is to be far enough away.”

— Laurie Frankel

67. “Because you know what’s even better than happy endings?” “What?” “Happy middles.” “You think?” “All the happy with none of the finality. All the happy with room enough to grow. What could be better than that?” “For a while,” said Rosie. “A while’s a long time,” said Penn.”

— Laurie Frankel

68. “You never have enough information. You don’t get to see the future. And if you screw up, if with your incomplete, contradictory information you make the wrong call, well, nothing less than your child’s entire future and happiness is at stake. It’s impossible. It’s heartbreaking. It’s maddening. But there’s no alternative.”

— Laurie Frankel

69. “Everyone needs air, water, food, shelter, and clothing all the time, Monday. Everyone needs care when they’re sick or hurt, love when they’re sad or scared, someone to tell them no or stop when they’re being unsafe. Everything else people need sometimes – and it’s a lot – is special. All of us have special needs.”

— Laurie Frankel

70. “Dispelling fear. Taming what was scary not by hiding it, not by blocking it or burying it, not by keeping it secret, but by reminding themselves, and everyone else, to choose love, choose openness, to think and be calm.”

— Laurie Frankel

71. “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.”

— Laurie Frankel

72. “Cranial neuralgia due to continuous stimulation of cutaneous nerves.”

— Laurie Frankel

73. “Grass stain?” “Annoying, probably permanent, essentially harmless. Kind of ugly.”

— Laurie Frankel

74. “I mean, if we could have everything, sure. If we can have it all, yeah, I wish them easy, successful, fun-filled lives, crowned with good friends, attentive lovers, heaps of money, intellectual stimulation, and good views out the window. I wish them eternal beauty, international travel, and smart things to watch on TV. But if I can’t have everything, if I only get a few, I’m not sure easy makes my wish list.”

— Laurie Frankel

75. “You have to help him unlearn it. You have to help him see that if he’s disappearing from the world, that’s too high a price to pay for fitting in.”

— Laurie Frankel

76. “That even when what people were waiting for was the worst new of their life or the best, even when the waiting was heavy with implication and consequence, waiting people still transformed into cranky toddlers, impatient and frowning and red-faced infuriated with vending machines that dispensed the wrong thing, and kids who did not use their inside voice.”

— Laurie Frankel

77. “Head colds should be tolerated. Children should be celebrated.”

— Laurie Frankel

78. “If you wrote your own characters, they didn’t disappoint you like real people did. If you told your own story, you got to pick your ending. Just being yourself never worked, but if you made yourself up, you got to be exactly who you knew yourself to be.”

— Laurie Frankel

79. “I know this book will be controversial, but honestly? I keep forgetting why.”

— Laurie Frankel

80. “For my child, for all our children, I want more options, more paths through the woods, wider ranges of normal, and unconditional love. Who doesn’t want that? I know this book will be controversial, but honestly? I keep forgetting why.”

— Laurie Frankel

81. “One thing on your list to worry about. Put all your worry into that one thing. Worry about it as much as you like, as much as you need to. But only that one thing. Anytime any of the other things flits across your mind, take that concern and channel it into your one thing.”

— Laurie Frankel

82. “At home, there is no middle way. You’re male or you’re female. There’s no in between. You conform or you hide. You conform or you’re wrong. If you dress like a girl, then you have to be a girl, all girl, and if any part of you’s not, that’s not okay.”

— Laurie Frankel

83. “All life. You are never finish, never done. Never become, always becoming. You know? Life is change so is always okay you are not there yet.”

— Laurie Frankel

84. “Story is the best magic there is.”

— Laurie Frankel

85. “One is the loneliest number. Never put all your eggs in one basket.”

— Laurie Frankel

86. “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.”

— Laurie Frankel

87. “Tears crawled out of Claude’s eyes and nose, and besides he was only five, but he tried to comfort his parents anyway. ‘I just feel a little bit sad. Sad isn’t bleeding. Sad is okay.”

— Laurie Frankel

88. “So Grumwald felt his way was, if not firmly paved, at least densely pebbled, and that was as good a start as one could wish for.”

— Laurie Frankel

89. “Children learn many wonderful things in kindergarten. How to line up for lunch. How to use inside voices. How to not push people. Important life skills for sure. I use them every day myself. But they learn other things too: you have to conform, or people might not like you; you have to be the same because different doesn’t feel good. At home, Claude’s loved no matter what. At school, it sometimes feels the opposite: you are not loved no matter what.”

— Laurie Frankel

90. “Later, much later, she said the same, that it was love pre first site, that she’d walked around that whole morning and afternoon somehow knowing that this would be the last first date of her life.”

— Laurie Frankel

91. “There’s nothing good that can come out of a child being sick.”

— Laurie Frankel

92. “Rosie appreciated the support but wasn’t sure parenting ever really qualified as brave – or maybe it always did – because it’s not like you had a choice.”

— Laurie Frankel

93. “Penn considered how clever it was of him to have birthed a Greek Chorus to hear his tales.”

— Laurie Frankel

94. “Do you realize, Rosie said to her mother, that I’m the one who’s suppose to becalming you down about all of this. Not the other way around? I’m the one who’s suppose to be talking you off the ledge. You’re suppose to be panicking and dragging him off to church or something. So few Jews at church these days, said Carmelo. You’re to old to be open-minded and tolerant, said Rosie. I’m too old not to be. She sucked coolly on her cigarette again, then waved at Rosie to punctuate her point.”

— Laurie Frankel

95. “Mistake good because you learn, you fix.”

— Laurie Frankel

96. “As she and Penn kept telling Poppy, you don’t have to like everyone. Find who’s fun and smart and safe, and stick with them.”

— Laurie Frankel

97. “We have this perfect love story that feels like a fairy tale and must be because how else to explain something so magical?”

— Laurie Frankel

98. “Lot of clinics in Bangkok do surgery but mostly for foreigner. Many kathoey here let be. Which parts not what matter. Is soul, how move, how dress, how love, how be. Just like Poppy, I am female soul so do not matter to me or Choochai or sons or daughters or anyone what is under pants. Makes sense?”

— Laurie Frankel

99. “These are things we all have to grapple with. A five-year-old has much to learn. When people are annoying, it feels good to push them but we mustn’t. Even though it’s often pleasant to shout, others are trying to concentrate. Though we’d always like to be first, sometimes it’s someone else’s turn. And when we behave in a manner other people don’t expect, there will be consequences.”

— Laurie Frankel

100. “She was in a book club?” said Poppy. “Everyone’s in a book club.” “Like with wine?” Poppy was intrigued. “It’s not a book club if there isn’t wine.”

— Laurie Frankel