Whatever Happened to Janie? Quotes

“You had to assume that his body would grow to match, in which case Stephen would become a man of splendid proportions.”
― Caroline B. Cooney, Whatever Happened to Janie?

“Sometimes Reeve couldn’t stand women. They were so practical.”
― Caroline B. Cooney, Whatever Happened to Janie?

“No boy to swagger down the hall with his arm around her, boasting with his walk that he dated this girl.”
― Caroline B. Cooney, Whatever Happened to Janie?

“Sometimes, when he was older, and especially after he became taller than his mother, he would put his arms around her and silently hold her, and feel her pain right through the fold of his embrace.”
― Caroline B. Cooney, Whatever Happened to Janie?

“they were not six people knit close in tight, warm threads of family, but travelers accidentally in the same motel.”
― Caroline B. Cooney, Whatever Happened to Janie?

“It’s an old picture,” said Stephen. “She’s in her thirties now. I don’t think she’s pretty anymore.”
― Caroline B. Cooney, Whatever Happened to Janie?

“A bag lady of indeterminate race pushed her belongings in a cart, on top of which she had balanced a broken-legged plastic chair and a bag full of returnable bottles she was plucking out of garbage cans. At one garbage can, she reached right between the legs of a black man who had draped himself like a corpse over the wire mesh. His snores blended into the throbbing from dozens of radios passing by on people’s shoulders. A tall, dramatic woman with remarkably high heels strode by, and as she passed, Stephen thought, That’s a man! He would have given this some consideration except that as they waited to cross the next street, he stood next to an unshaven and filthy white person, from whose toothless gums hung long yellow strands of some terrible food or disease.”
― Caroline B. Cooney, Whatever Happened to Janie?

“There were no Middle Ages in America, dumb-o,” said his sister. “White people hadn’t gotten here yet. Only Europe had Middle Ages.”
― Caroline B. Cooney, Whatever Happened to Janie?

“All his life Reeve had reacted to good news and bad by wanting to throw things.”
― Caroline B. Cooney, Whatever Happened to Janie?

“If only she had never stolen Sarah-Charlotte’s milk. None of this would have happened.”
― Caroline B. Cooney, Whatever Happened to Janie?