Top 120 Laurie Frankel Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “It was a crime of passion. “Mine to”, Ben nodded, also miserably. And which was worse, Penn thought. Out of hatred or love?”

— Laurie Frankel

102. “That there were more ways than just two, wider possibilities than hidden or betrayed, stalled or brokenhearted, male or female, right or wrong. Middle ways. Ways beyond.”

— Laurie Frankel

103. “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?”

— Laurie Frankel

104. “Boys and girls, you asked good questions, and you asked them nicely and quietly, so I’m putting a cookie token in our cookie jar to help us earn our cookie party.”

— Laurie Frankel

105. “Not much of what I value in our lives is easy. But there’s not much of it I’d trade for easy either, I don’t think.”

— Laurie Frankel

106. “That was how, whatever else they were, Claude and Poppy became Buddhists for life.”

— Laurie Frankel

107. “Later, much later, she said the same, that it was love pre first sight, that she’d walked around that whole morning and afternoon somehow knowing that this would be the last first date of her life. Whereas this had made him nervous as hell, it had made her calm. Whereas he’d felt impatient with the small talk, she knew they had all the time in the world.”

— Laurie Frankel

108. “Penn was a student of narrative and knew that lovers should be wooed, relationships fought for, that anything too easily won was soon lost or else not worth winning.”

— Laurie Frankel

109. “You can tell anytime,’ Penn said, ’but once people know, they can never unknow.”

— Laurie Frankel

110. “Easy is nice, but it’s not as good as getting to be who who are or stand up for what you believe in. Easy is nice but I wonder how often it leads to fulfilling work or partnership or being.”

— Laurie Frankel

111. “Easy is nice, but I wonder how often it leads to fulfilling work or partnership or being.”

— Laurie Frankel

112. “Besides, this meant she was going to need wooing after all. He was delighted. Penn was a student of narrative and knew that lovers should be wooed, relationships fought for, that anything too easily won was soon lost or else not worth winning. He suspected she was worth winning.”

— Laurie Frankel

113. “It’s not that Poppy’s the girl and Claude’s the boy. There’s boy and girl in both of them. They both have what they parade and what they hide. It’s that Poppy’s the happy child, and Claude is the sad one.”

— Laurie Frankel

114. “Orion’s butt used to be a tuba,” said Rigel, “and that’s why it makes those noises.”

— Laurie Frankel

115. “Only once, early on, did Claude wonder, “Carmy?” “Yes, dear?” “Will you love me even if I keep wearing a dress?” “I will love you even if you wear a dress made out of puppies.” Carmelo nuzzled his neck, and he giggled. “I will love you even if you wear a hat made out of toe cheese.” Claude wrinkled his nose. “You will?” “Of course.” “How come?” “’Cause I’m your grandma. That’s what grandmas are for.” “Loving you no matter what you wear?” “Loving you no matter what.”

— Laurie Frankel

116. “After that she’d have to go elsewhere anyway for breadth of experience. A different part of the world where she would develop expertise in more than frostbite, and lost toes, and idiots frozen to their fishing poles. But Rue, followed by Ben, followed by Rigel and Orion, had put a stop to that plan too; children being the enemies of plans and anything new besides themselves.”

— Laurie Frankel

117. “There’s a fork in the road. It seems like there are only two choices. It seems like the task is to figure out which way to go, left or right, forward or back, deeper or safer, but in fact any of those choices is easy compared to the real trick. The real trick is you have to forge your way straight ahead through the trees where there is no path.”

— Laurie Frankel

118. “You’re too 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 it at Rosie to punctuate her point. Not for the first time, Rosie envied smokers their rhetorical device. “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?”

— Laurie Frankel

119. “But by the time those acquaintances became close friends, it was too late. Perhaps there was a perfect moment in between, when you were close enough to tell but not so close it was problematic that you hadn’t done so already, but it was infinitesimal, too fleet and fleeting to pin down, visible not even in hindsight.”

— Laurie Frankel

120. “It was as if those school years bred a nostalgia so deep into the cells that the body woke to it each fall as naturally as the squirrels in the park began their frenzied harvest, never mind the weather was still fine, the sun still gracing them all.”

— Laurie Frankel

121. “It wasn’t so much that she and Penn set out to practice Zen marriage equality and perfect-balance parenting. It was just that there was way more to do than two could manage, but by their both filling every spare moment, some of what needed to got done.”

— Laurie Frankel

122. “Rosie knew this moment from raising four other children to this point already, the one where suddenly your kids know more than you do about something they’ve discovered all on their own, something real and important not just cartoons or video games. Amazing was exactly what it was.” Chap. “Hedge Enemies.”

— Laurie Frankel

123. “Hormones contribute to intelligence and creativity, critical thinking, abstract analysis.”

— Laurie Frankel

124. “This is a medical issue, but mostly it’s a cultural issue. It’s a social issue and an emotional issue and a family dynamic issue and a community issue.”

— Laurie Frankel

125. “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.”

— Laurie Frankel

126. “The road trip would have been romantic, cathartic maybe, to feel each mile drop behind them, to watch the landscape change and change again, to eat hamburgers in sticky diners and make picnics from sad grocery stores and take over motels so beaten they could afford to stay two to a room and everyone could have his own bed.”

— Laurie Frankel

127. “Night shifts were brutal but easier to schedule around. Sometimes, it was just less painful to forgo sleep than to try to find child care for all the early dismissals and vacations and holidays and staff developments and parent-teacher conference days. It was also true that nights in the ER were often more peaceful than nights at home with her family. Sometimes they even involved less blood.”

— Laurie Frankel

128. “But some secrets are secrets, whereas some secrets are lies.”

— Laurie Frankel

129. “Knowing what the problem was didn’t help if none of the solutions were available in any case.”

— Laurie Frankel