Rachel > Rachel's Quotes

“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”
― Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx

“If you go home with somebody, and they don't have books, don't fuck 'em! Don’t sleep with people who don’t read!”
― John Waters

“As a child, watching the news or listening to it on the radio with my father I thought, when they said “the body was discovered by a man walking his dog,” that it was always the same man. I still imagine him, putting his walking shoes on at the door, finding the leash, the familiar dread as he clips it onto the dog’s collar, but still setting out, regardless, in the hope that, today, there won’t be a body. But twenty minutes later, God, there it is.”
― Meg Mason, Sorrow and Bliss

“She had moved on to another jazzy song, trying to engage the apathetic audience. “Everybody, clap your handsu!” she shouted into the mic. She threw her hands in the air and let out an emphatic “Woo!”
― Iris Yamashita, City Under One Roof

“Cara shifted her attention back toward the sad Japanese woman on the stage, who strutted and gyrated, trying to be sexy somehow, despite her age and faded makeup.”
― Iris Yamashita, City Under One Roof

“I couldn’t keep myself from staring at her; I was helpless in her presence. The way she blinked, or pushed her hair aside, the way she smiled gently when she was annoyed, or played with her painted nails before asking a question—I liked everything about her.”
― Joël Dicker, The Enigma of Room 622

“Measurements must be precise to yield a crispy mille-feuille, a lacy Florentine, a perfectly chewy pie crust.”
― Jessa Maxwell, The Golden Spoon

“I make enough for two pies, mixing the dry ingredients with the butter using a pastry cutter. I work the mixture until there’s no dry flour left in the bowl. To that I add ice water a tablespoon at a time until I can pinch off the dough in sticky pieces.”
― Jessa Maxwell, The Golden Spoon

“I think back to an episode from season three when a sweet postal worker named Dave made a batch of tiny cookies flavored only with butter. They were plain to look at, undecorated aside from a sprinkling of coarse sugar, but the flavors were so divine that Betsy went back in for a second.”
― Jessa Maxwell, The Golden Spoon

“My hands feel light and capable as I mix up a simple batter, creaming sugar and butter with eggs and vanilla.”
― Jessa Maxwell, The Golden Spoon

“Rye Manhattan. Straight up, with a twist,” said Charles. “Bourbon preference?”
― Alejandro Varela, The People Who Report More Stress

“He sketched portraits of dead comrades on handkerchiefs as decorative gifts for relatives and supporters outside. Such artwork was so popular that Long Kesh was nicknamed “the hankie factory.”
― Rory Carroll, There Will Be Fire: Margaret Thatcher, the IRA, and Two Minutes That Changed History

“Shim could not tell if the woozy light-headedness of nascent love that made his breath catch every time he saw Chun was partially a function of his own interrupted sleep as his hours began matching that of Nethersole’s most in-demand midwife, or the warmth of Chun’s strong, elegant hands when she switched from holding on to the bar under her seat to clutching his waist on a day when they hit a bump and she had to prevent herself from flying off the bike.”
― Ava Chin, Mott Street: A Chinese American Family's Story of Exclusion and Homecoming

“Did he contain himself as he felt inside Elva’s vagina, smooth like a cul-de-sac, with no discernible cervix, no peekaboo womb or errant fallopian tubes? Did he express surprise or consternation upon uncovering what lay before him, an extra . . . what? No, not an unusually large, blushing labia, but a real-life miniature penis, one that could become aroused with certain thoughts or feelings, but which at that moment remained flaccid between his cold, clinical fingers.”
― Ava Chin, Mott Street: A Chinese American Family's Story of Exclusion and Homecoming

“He had grown used to the eyes upon him as he and his uncle traveled from their bedroom community in Brooklyn to Chinatown. When one woman dropped her purse at his feet and Shim handed it back to her with “Your handbag, m’lady,” and a flourish, she’d nearly jumped out of her seat in surprise. He mentioned none of this to Chun, because after nearly a month in Hong Kong in her steady presence, the sharp edges of being treated with suspicion were blunted by a film of nostalgia. New York was home; this trip had made him realize that.”
― Ava Chin, Mott Street: A Chinese American Family's Story of Exclusion and Homecoming

“(Good riddance, Yulan must have thought, to finally leave the one-room shack and her in-laws behind.)”
― Ava Chin, Mott Street: A Chinese American Family's Story of Exclusion and Homecoming

“Yulan wondered if he wanted to have her again, in that way, even though she suspected that she was already pregnant, her menstrual cycle having gone missing for some weeks now. She sat near him and waited, but Chin On’s face was a mask as smooth and elegant as a vase, and pretty soon he was loudly snoring. Yulan began collecting the opium pipe, and the entire works, the residue slow and sticky like tree resin, when Chin On suddenly grabbed her by the wrist. Leave it. I don’t like you doing this in front of the children, she said. Did his grip become a tightening vise, so that her breath caught and she cried out in surprise, the pain sharp and searing, until she released everything in her hands? Did he hit her? If it wasn’t for the mitigating circumstances of the opiate, it’s likely that he would have hit her. Chin On’s rage would become legendary in the family lore, but Yulan was experiencing it for the first time in a very long while. Even under the calming presence of opium, Chin On didn’t like anyone, especially a wife, telling him what to do. Whatever happened that night, she felt the pressure of his fingers against her wrists, long after the bruises disappeared.”
― Ava Chin, Mott Street: A Chinese American Family's Story of Exclusion and Homecoming

“One day, Elva visited, as she often did from Brooklyn. Lily and Normon were chasing one another, tripping over their younger brother and all falling into a heap onto the floor. Chun grabbed the two by the arms and gave both a swift rap to the head with a sharp knuckle. Lily swiftly burst into tears. Normon bit his lip, nostrils flaring, refusing to cry. Chun flew into a rage—the eldest needed to model good behavior for the youngest children, and here was the toddler Johnny on the floor, bawling. If Normon was going to be so hard-necked obstinate, then both Lily and Normon, as the oldest children in the pecking order, needed to be punished. With a harder rap to the head, they were soon both crying—Normon’s face breaking open like a floodgate. Before she knew it, at the sight of them, Chun was herself in tears. It’s unclear if Elva put her hand on Chun’s shoulder or cleared her throat and said, Okay, enough, but once she’d ushered the children into their bedroom, she returned to find Chun sitting on a chair. They hate me, Chun said. They love you—they’re just being children. Not them, Chun said. The women—in this building. Why? They know that I am different, Chun said, attempting to explain, but knowing it was no use. For Elva, they were all Chinese at 37 Mott, but Chun was distinctly aware of the divisions. It was embarrassing to talk about such things to her aunt, her only true friend aside from Doshim, and a lofan. Elva was truly puzzled. “Shouldn’t that no longer matter here? You’re in a new country! This is America, after all.” Chun’s natural inclination to try to please Elva, to pretend that things were fine even when things were so bad that mo’ paa, mo’ waa—you can’t crawl, can’t scratch—made Elva’s misunderstanding feel like an anvil pressing down on her chest. “Don’t give up,” Elva finally said, her hand on Chun’s small shoulders, so bony like a little bird, now shaking as the tears began to flow. “I know it seems impossible, but there is always a way.” • • •”
― Ava Chin, Mott Street: A Chinese American Family's Story of Exclusion and Homecoming

“The dog is grilled to a slight char, strangled in a strip of grilled bacon, and topped with diced tomato, onion (crude and fried), winnie (I cannot for the life of me figure out what this is), mayonnaise, mustard and—wait for it—beans. The sheer risk factor of beans on a hot dog”
― Jamie Loftus, Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs

“Each morning, buzzing, he slung his legs off the bed and sat bolt upright, naked, allowing his male parts to hang over the edge of the mattress, and did his best to capture these jangled dreams, recording”
― Adrienne Brodeur, Little Monsters

“Kristin recounted a recent incident when she overheard a woman in a grocery store checkout line telling a friend that, because Washington State had finally passed paid family medical leave, she could now start the family she had put off for so long. “This woman didn’t know about how many years of work it had taken to get there,” Kristin explained. “They didn’t know about the long fight.”
― Sara Petersen, Momfluenced: Inside the Maddening, Picture-Perfect World of Mommy Influencer Culture

“I think I missed the fact that maybe my longing for a third baby was also impacted, at least a little bit, by momfluencers like Taza who made pregnancy and motherhood look good. I forgot to credit them for being one of the many fucked-up reasons I craved another baby.”
― Sara Petersen, Momfluenced: Inside the Maddening, Picture-Perfect World of Mommy Influencer Culture

“Then there are the personal reasons. I love my kids, but I often don’t love being a mother. The other day, in a text thread with friends also sick of nonstop pandemic parenting, I wrote, “I just want to listen to podcasts and keep them alive.” It’s so boring, so hard, and so thankless. I’m often bad at it. Which is why I’m fascinated by the thousands of mothers on Instagram who make it look magical, like the only thing anyone would ever want to be.”
― Sara Petersen, Momfluenced: Inside the Maddening, Picture-Perfect World of Mommy Influencer Culture

“A piece of paper, on it a QR code. It definitely isn’t mine. It is a torn A4 page from a notebook, the QR code printed sideways across the lines.”
― Gillian McAllister, Just Another Missing Person

“Soaking up the onstage elation, my mother kept touring with the Graham Company. She would go away, come home, and go away again. “I think my children are the most wonderful, the best looking, the smartest, and the most awe-inspiring children in the world,” she would recall. “Yet it is as though they are not connected to me. They come to see the show at a matinee wearing lovely clothes that I swear I have never seen before. They meet the cast, charm everyone and are whisked home to do whatever it is they do there. I think about taking them to dinner between shows, but somehow never get around to asking if this is all right. All right with whom? I am afraid to answer my own questions.”
― Martha Hodes, My Hijacking: A Personal History of Forgetting and Remembering

“What news!” Catherine wrote back. “Unbelievable, fantastic and slightly shocking. I’m so excited.” (Catherine soon wrote a letter to our grandmother, asking why our mother was having another baby, given that she hadn’t stayed with her first two children, to which our grandmother wrote back, “What a smart girl you are.”)”
― Martha Hodes, My Hijacking: A Personal History of Forgetting and Remembering

“More inventively, the Raab children created snacks out of watermelon seeds, using the packets of salt from Red Cross meals and baking the seeds on the airplane’s sunny wing.”
― Martha Hodes, My Hijacking: A Personal History of Forgetting and Remembering

“invoking the New York Mets pitcher hero from the 1969 World Series as a model water guzzler (“Jerry Koosman drinks water and you do too!”).”
― Martha Hodes, My Hijacking: A Personal History of Forgetting and Remembering

“Because I enjoy happy endings and want to bring the couple together again, like I’m some great fat Cupid in wellies. Because it would be bloody inconvenient living here without them next door.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Glass Room

“Vera thought for a moment that she felt like a very fat Alice in a strange Wonderland.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Glass Room