The Briar Club

by Kate Quinn

“I make it a policy never to believe more than a third of what men tell me,”

“Pete. The Founding Fathers did not create this great nation of ours so that we could let them down by combining canned tuna with instant mushroom soup. That is not a casserole, that is a war crime. Go downstairs and dump it in the trash this instant,

“A successful dinner party needs just one person all the others loathe, Pete—it gives everyone something to unite against.”

“Diets might be good for the waistline but not for the temperament,” Grace advised. “Eat the red meat, sugar pie.”

“We can always do better,” Nora said. “These papers acknowledged from the beginning that we weren’t good enough yet. ‘A more perfect union’—it’s right there in our foundations that we aren’t perfect, that we have more to strive for.”

patriotism should be more than just a simple wave of the flag without thought behind it. Her pride in this building, being part of it with everything it protected—it was all wrapped up in hope, not complacency.

“Happiness.” Grace rose, smoothing her skirt. “It’s a choice as much as anything. Or you could choose to be angry, and if you stay angry long enough, it will become comfortable, like an old robe. But eventually you’ll realize that old robe is all you’ve got, and there isn’t anything else in the wardrobe that fits. And at that point, you’re just waiting to trade the robe for a shroud—or at least, that’s what I’ve always thought.”

In my experience, if a girl attempts a career, she needs more than the opportunity. She needs someone giving her a nudge.” A smile. “Quite often another woman.”

“I sometimes think this country is an eternal battle between our best and our worst angels. Hopefully we’re listening to the good angel more often than the bad one.” She sighed. “We do that, and change will come.”

“OUT THREE!” Arlene shouted. She needed an excuse to take off the sugar-sweet smile and scream more often, Bea thought. Maybe all women did.

“You like that feeling?” she told them. “Hold on to that. A woman needs to know how to get vicious, get tough, get down and dirty. Remember that.” And there had been grins, and she thought maybe teenage girls weren’t all such prissy little snots after all.

Because you’re a human being, Grace wanted to say. Because you realized that it’s a more complicated question than people like McCarthy or Hoover like to think. Who deserved to live here. Who deserved a second chance. Who deserved to call themselves a citizen of this big, flawed, complicated country.