Blueprints for Building Better Girls Quotes

“You know what they say - sleep is the mother's drug of choice, but like heroin, only the very rich and the very poor can afford it.”
― Elissa Schappell, Blueprints for Building Better Girls

“Don't be a fool, there is no such thing as just a girl.”
― Elissa Schappell, Blueprints for Building Better Girls

“Nostalgia is a narcotic.”
― Elissa Schappell, Blueprints for Building Better Girls

“She reminded me of the girls I'd grown up with. Spoiled, undeniably pretty girls who tirelessly solicited compliments by claiming to be disgusted by their looks (too fat, too thin), who'd beg you to order nachos or fries to share! and then, claiming loss of appetite, sit and stare at you while you ate like they were watching porn. Who one day are your best friends and the next the agents of your destruction.”
― Elissa Schappell, Blueprints for Building Better Girls

“A single girl who needs nobody makes people uncomfortable, and my mom is right in this, appearance is everything, and appearing to have no one is like swimming alone in the middle of the ocean with a flesh wound.”
― Elissa Schappell, Blueprints for Building Better Girls

“She didn't know if Evie had always been emotionally promiscuous or if it was the grief talking. It was like she was infected by sadness, and as a carrier she made everyone around her sad. Which seemed reckless and a little selfish to Paige. When you're contagious you quarantine yourself. Evie should stay inside until the grief ran its course. Stay away from other people, children, anyone whose psychological immune system might be compromised.”
― Elissa Schappell, Blueprints for Building Better Girls

“You should see the other guy..." Teddy says, in this laconic tone that matches her black kimono. She takes a drag on a joint, barely glancing up from the crossword, which she always does in pen.”
― Elissa Schappell, Blueprints for Building Better Girls

“The move for the pitcher of Bloody Marys on the porch railing is pure instinct, reflex. Tomatoes are packed with vitamins. Next, I’ll duck into the loo. Deb always hides a box of Munchkins in the bathroom, because she hates to eat in front of boys.”
― Elissa Schappell, Blueprints for Building Better Girls

“These crabs, Paige explained, weren’t ordinary civilian crabs, but rock ‘n’ roll royalty crabs, having been passed, via groupies, from the Rolling Stones to Aerosmith to Guns N’ Roses, for decades. It made her feel connected to something larger, a part of history.

‘Like those sourdough starts that were so popular in the seventies,’ I said. ‘Mine was supposedly a direct descendant of one that Alice Waters started in Berkeley.”
― Elissa Schappell, Blueprints for Building Better Girls

“It was true Paige and I had dinner alone. She wanted to stop by and pick up some books — poetry books I’d owned in college. Back then I always had a copy of Dante or Rilke in my bag and a pack of cigarettes. I was surprised that Paige, who was pre-med (a fact I was very proud of) even wanted them. She seemed surprised to find I owned them.

She’d discovered them on the bottom shelf of the bookcase in my bedroom. When I found her, sitting on my bed, running her finger down their spines like she was checking for scoliosis, she demanded to know, Whose are these? Where did they come from?”
― Elissa Schappell, Blueprints for Building Better Girls

“Paige and Charlotte had first met on the playground. Without a word, each had recognized the other as a sister in the bonds of chronic sleep deprivation. It wasn’t anything so obvious as dark circles, dirty hair, or the word diapers scrawled on the back of a hang. Or even the fact that they both were wearing their husbands’ oversize sweaters. It was seeing the identical expression, the haunted, bewildered look of the POW on the other woman’s face. How did this happen?

This moment of recognition had caused each of them to look away.”
― Elissa Schappell, Blueprints for Building Better Girls

“We are driving along a road I have driven my whole life. I still watch for the bends in the creek, checking to see how high the water comes up on the bank, I still hold my breath as we go around the blind turn, I can close my eyes and tell you where we are just by the way my stomach feels. I wonder if after I grow up and move away, if I came back would my body still remember this road, or would I have forgotten it?”
― Elissa Schappell, Blueprints for Building Better Girls

“No matter what kind of clouds they are – nimbus, stratus, cumulus – my mother always sees Elvis, and my sister always sees angels.”
― Elissa Schappell, Blueprints for Building Better Girls