The Adults Quotes

“Children's lives are always beginning and adults' lives are always ending. Or is it the opposite? Your childhood is always ending and your adult self is always beginning. You are always learning how to say good-bye to whoever you were at the dinner table the night before.”
― Alison Espach, The Adults

“And then once in the music storage room. It was cold. The room was small with thin gray carpet and I cried after in my bed thinking of how sad the violins looked alone in the corner. It was embarrassing to have sex in front of the wrong things, especially a violin, which was so dignified at every angle”
― Alison Espach, The Adults

“Being an adult, it seemed, was horrible. But being a child was awful too, and moving from one state to the other only meant you were moving closer to death, with so much and so little to talk about all at the same time, and how was that even possible?”
― Alison Espach, The Adults

“There is nothing better than this,” he said, and I worried he was right. I worried that once something had entered you, it would never leave—he would plant himself inside me and grow and grow until I was nothing but him.”
― Alison Espach, The Adults

“You know," my father said sprinkling nutmeg on his brandy Alexander, "if you sniff too much nutmeg, you could die."

"You can die from anything, really," my mother said "You can die from eating too many apricots."

"How many apricots?" I said, afraid that the World's Most Pathetic Death could happen to me.”
― Alison Espach, The Adults

“Inside my house, nobody was home, except everybody, but it was easy to feel like those were one and the same.”
― Alison Espach, The Adults

“When it was real it wasn’t funny. When you touched someone, they were always with you. When his mouth was on mine, we held the same breath in the same moment, and when he was naked, his body was covered in tiny black hairs that stuck to my clothes even after I washed them. He had sowly become a part of me and when he was cruel, or cold, or acted like we couldn’t go on like this anymore it felt like he was ripping my limbs off, one at a time.”
― Alison Espach, The Adults

“Adults were constantly auditioning, but for what?”
― Alison Espach, The Adults

“Even through all of this, sometimes I wanted to lift up her chin and say, "Don't you see that is your dog?" Don't you see how we didn't want to have to love you, Laura? Don't you see how you have to love things forever anyway, no matter if it shakes, or drools, or barks in the middle of the night, or throws up food, or dies, because even in death, he is still your dog? You picked him out of a group and said, that is my dog, and the dog you picked shakes and drools and barks in the middle of the night, but you named him. And for that reason you should never want to give him up, you should always be grateful since your dog is one of the few things in life that you actually can choose as your own.”
― Alison Espach, The Adults

“All fathers are liars . . . If you want to be a father, you have to be prepared to become a liar.”
― Alison Espach, The Adults

“The neighborhood had gotten really into pastel the last few years. It started when Alfred's wife painted their whole house a soft pink during menopause. Looks Like Linen it was called. People raved. A magazine came, made the family hold up a rotisserie chicken, and then photographed it. A few months later, Mrs. Trenton's house was Mint Leaf. Ours became Celery Powder. The Resnicks' house turned Yellow Feather.”
― Alison Espach, The Adults

“Discuss Emily’s belief that “fathers were men who were just trying to understand, while mothers were women who were trying to change us”.”
― Alison Espach, The Adults

“You’re late,” I said to my mother, who was by my side. “Dear God,” my mother said like she was about to embark on a prayer. Like a prayer is some kind of journey toward something. “What happened?” Everything. Nothing. “The Austrian maid broke up with her American boyfriend,” I said.”
― Alison Espach, The Adults

“The tram police in Prague were like a secret police left over from an expired Communist tradition, dressed casually in jeans and fleeces, riding the trains silently like they were just another tourist, and then flashing a gold badge.”
― Alison Espach, The Adults

“It’s like wearing too much black to a funeral,” I said. “You can’t wear too much black to a funeral,” she said, like she was the authority on blackness and funerals. “Yes you can,” I said. “I’ve seen it.” Ester asked me if I was going to be protagonistic all night. “You mean antagonistic,” I said. “See?” she said.”
― Alison Espach, The Adults

“Ester said that when you were married, there was no sense of urgency anymore. “Like when one of us was leaving on a trip, we wouldn’t even have sex. I would say, ‘You didn’t even try,’ and he would say, ‘You’re on your period.’ And I would say, ‘You wouldn’t even know that because you didn’t even try,’ and he would say, ‘Ester, I can see the garbage can.’” “Sheesh,” was my only response. “Anyways,” she said, “that’s what it’s like to be married.” “It’s like having tampons in a can and somebody you love noticing?” “It’s like putting up a giant scoreboard in your living room.” “Then why would you want to get married again?” I asked. “Because,” she said. “Sometimes, you win.”
― Alison Espach, The Adults

“Ester said that when you were married, there was no sense of urgency anymore. “Like when one of us was leaving on a trip, we wouldn’t even have sex. I would say, ‘You didn’t even try,’ and he would say, ‘You’re on your period.’ And I would say, ‘You wouldn’t even know that because you didn’t even try,’ and he would say, ‘Ester, I can see the garbage can.’” “Sheesh,” was my only response. “Anyways,” she said, “that’s what it’s like to be married.” “It’s like having tampons in a can and somebody you love noticing?” “It’s like putting up a giant scoreboard in your living room.”
― Alison Espach, The Adults

“We held hands and I remembered feeling something in the pit of my stomach, something like love or terror or the need to possess him, like a woman who is never and always alone, the terror of a woman who is in love all the time.”
― Alison Espach, The Adults

“The waiter came back with our absinthe. He put two cups of green liquid in front of us. It looked like antifreeze. He ripped open two packets of sugar and poured them into two spoons. He dipped the sugar into the absinthe, and then lit the sugar on fire. A flame grew over the spoon like electric mold, and the sugar caramelized. I laughed while Jonathan stared into my eyes. The waiter poured the flaming sugar into the absinthe and stirred. Jonathan and I picked up our glasses, toasted to nothing except transformation, which felt like enough. I swallowed the absinthe, and it was huge and hot down my throat. It felt like swallowing the sun whole, like a giant mistake.”
― Alison Espach, The Adults

“My hair was darkening from a dirty blond to an ashy brown like my father’s, and my mother was so disappointed. Last year, she announced that the “sun had left it,” and my father picked up a chunk as he walked by, rubbed his bald spot, and said, “Why is my hair growing out of your head?”
― Alison Espach, The Adults

“it wasn’t the truth that solved our problems; the truth was always just the beginning of our problems.”
― Alison Espach, The Adults

“My mom hates that I smoke,” he said. “She said it’s bad around the baby. Nothing’s good for the baby. And do you know what I say to that? Good. I say, fuck the baby. Long live the smoke.”
― Alison Espach, The Adults

“Nana was the wisest woman anyone knew. She did the crossword puzzle every day and knew about words my father didn’t. She knew how to keep all of her flowers fully bloomed through October, and whenever I fought with my mother over the last grocery bag in the car, Nana would recite a Bible passage from memory. We’d be silenced by the immediacy of God standing before us in a knit sweater, burgundy heels.”
― Alison Espach, The Adults

“I told my mother I’d do her makeup. She looked at me like I asked to file the taxes, shifted in her brand-new off-the-shoulder chiffon dress, picking lint from the hem, and said, “No, thanks.”
― Alison Espach, The Adults

“Sometimes, I didn’t even notice I was alive until somebody else did, and what was weirder, more incomprehensible than that?”
― Alison Espach, The Adults

“Your father is a liar,” Brittany said to Janice. “That’s what it all boils down to.” “All fathers are liars,” Janice said. “If you want to be a father, you have to be prepared to become a liar.”
― Alison Espach, The Adults

“He’s like, ‘I am a doctor.’” “I didn’t know your dad was a doctor,” Brittany said. “He’s not really,” Janice said. “He’s a natural pathologist. He thinks he can cure people with herbs and tapping on parts of their bodies and things and chanting in their faces. Like a witch. Like, he thinks he’s a witch.”
― Alison Espach, The Adults

“I agreed, even though I knew I wasn’t the type of person who would die from grief. I was the kind of person who would sit with grief on the couch until grief died, who would watch reruns of game shows while grief guessed the price of a can of green beans. Seventy-nine cents! Grief was always right. Grief went to the supermarket a lot.”
― Alison Espach, The Adults

“I was quiet. Jonathan sat back down and put his head in his hands. “That’s what he was like.”

“And what were you like?” I asked.

He put his head down on the desk. “Like this,” he said, his voice muffled.

“And what was she like?”

“Smart,” he said, his head still down on the desk. “Too smart.”

“And how did she die?”

“I don’t know.”

He nervously started tapping his feet.

“You don’t know?” I asked. “What kind of answer is that?”

“I mean, I’m not sure really.”

We sat there in silence until I said, “Well, was it sudden?”

“Yes,” he said. “Very sudden. But it felt slow. It felt like it took years.”
― Alison Espach, The Adults

“I thought of all the empty bottles and cigarette ends I had created and all the men I had created them with. There were so many things I had loved as my own, and these things never ended up being mine. All of the glass lights strung on other people’s porches, houseplants that were someone else’s, rugs and paintings and lighting fixtures and curtains and different men who looked different in every room, and I closed my eyes, overwhelmed by the infinite ways to live a finite life. I wanted to run out of my apartment until the street signs and passing cars ripped me of my belongings, until the wind had worn me down to sand.”
― Alison Espach, The Adults