You Should Have Known Quotes

“And one day she said to me, 'For the rest of my life, it's the first thing they'll say about me when I leave the room.' And I remember thinking: Yes that's true, it will be. But we can't really do anything about what they say when we leave the room. We'll never be able to control that. And we shouldn't try. Our job is just to...well, be in the room while we're there, and try not to think too much about where we're not. Whatever room we happen to be in, just, be there.”
― Jean Hanff Korelitz, You Should Have Known

“If a woman chose the wrong person, he was always going to be the wrong person: that was all. The most capable therapist in the world wouldn’t be able to do much more than negotiate the treaty.”
― Jean Hanff Korelitz, You Should Have Known

“I actually think there are lots of good matches for each person, and they cross our paths all the time, but we’re so wedded to the idea of love at first sight that we can miss the really great people who don’t come with a thunderbolt attached.”
― Jean Hanff Korelitz, You Should Have Known

“She persuades herself that something she has intuitively seen in a man she barely knows isn’t true at all now that she—quote unquote—has gotten to know him better. And it’s that impulse to negate our own impressions that is so astonishingly powerful. And it can have the most devastating impact on a woman’s life. And we’ll always let ourselves off the hook for it, in our own lives, even as we’re looking at some other deluded woman and thinking: How could she not have known? And I feel, just so strongly, that we need to hold ourselves to that same standard. And before we’re taken in, not after.”
― Jean Hanff Korelitz, You Should Have Known

“You know, wanting what you have is supposedly the secret of happiness.”
― Jean Hanff Korelitz, You Should Have Known

“The women were responsible for everything. They were guilty of crimes, real and illusory. They had not thought hard enough, tried hard enough, asked enough of themselves. It was as if the plane had fallen from the sky for the sole reason that they had stopped flapping their arms.”
― Jean Hanff Korelitz, You Should Have Known

“I know it’s supposed to take a village to raise our children, but why does ours have so many village idiots?”
― Jean Hanff Korelitz, You Should Have Known

“if you’re paying attention, if your eyes and your ears and your mind are open, as they should be open. You can know and then, critically, hold on to that knowledge, even if he loves you (or seems to), even if he chooses you (or seems to), even if he promises to make you happy (which no one, not one person on the planet, can possibly do). And part of her, a big part of her, had obviously wanted to be the one who told them this. Because I am such a competent”
― Jean Hanff Korelitz, You Should Have Known

“Pick the wrong person and it doesn’t matter how much you want to fix your marriage. It won’t work.”
― Jean Hanff Korelitz, You Should Have Known

“Well, there is narcissism in all of us, of course. I mean, we are the protagonists of our own lives, so naturally it feels like we're at the wheel. But we're not at the wheel. That just happens to be where the window is located.”
― Jean Hanff Korelitz, You Should Have Known

“He has. A fucking. Rothko. Over the fireplace”
― Jean Hanff Korelitz, You Should Have Known

“Sometimes Grace wished she could take a poison-tipped lance to the entire wedding industry. Downgrade your average twenty-first-century nuptial extravaganza to quiet vows, taken in the presence of dear friends and family, and half the engaged couples - the right half - would drop the entire notion of marriage on the spot. Persuade couples to save the party for their twenty-fifth anniversary, when his hairline had evaporated and her waist was thick from childbearing, and a whole lot of them would retract in horror. But by the time they came to her, the barn door was bolted and the horse was long gone.”
― Jean Hanff Korelitz, You Should Have Known

“was a skill she had always inwardly marveled at when she discovered it in one of her patients, the smooth transitions and fancy footwork with which someone took a nugget of non-negotiable fact, modified it on the spot, and handed it back, an altogether new and tangible animal”
― Jean Hanff Korelitz, The Undoing: Previously Published as You Should Have Known

“Actually, his illness caused him to commit suicide. That’s what happened. And his mother, my patient, as you can imagine, was so sad. And she had to find a way to get some peace after this terrible thing. And one day she said to me, ‘For the rest of my life, it’s the first thing they’ll say about me when I leave the room.’ And I remember thinking: Yes, that’s true, it will be. But we can’t really do anything about what they say when we leave the room. We’ll never be able to control that. And we shouldn’t try. Our job is just to…well, be in the room while we’re there, and try not to think too much about where we’re not. Whatever room we happen to be in, just, be there,” she finished lamely.”
― Jean Hanff Korelitz, The Undoing: Previously Published as You Should Have Known

“And the truth is, the world is full of therapists who’ll sit you down, take your money, massage your self-esteem, and send you on your way, without ever helping you understand how you helped create the circumstances that brought you here.”
― Jean Hanff Korelitz, The Undoing: Previously Published as You Should Have Known

“But we can’t really do anything about what they say when we leave the room. We’ll never be able to control that. And we shouldn’t try. Our job is just to…well, be in the room while we’re there, and try not to think too much about where we’re not. Whatever room we happen to be in, just, be there,” she finished lamely.”
― Jean Hanff Korelitz, You Should Have Known

“But we can’t really do anything about what they say when we leave the room. We’ll never be able to control that. And we shouldn’t try. Our job is just to…well, be in the room while we’re there, and try not to think too much about where we’re not. Whatever room we happen to be in, just, be there,”
― Jean Hanff Korelitz, You Should Have Known

“Malaga Alves.” Obviously. Everything that rises must converge.”
― Jean Hanff Korelitz, You Should Have Known

“She knew that she had brought him the very safety and sense of belonging that was so important for a child, but which he had never experienced in his family of origin.”
― Jean Hanff Korelitz, You Should Have Known

“This is how you know you’re on Long Island, somebody offers you coffee and Entenmann’s.”
― Jean Hanff Korelitz, You Should Have Known

“And it’s that impulse to negate our own impressions that is so astonishingly powerful.”
― Jean Hanff Korelitz, You Should Have Known

“want of a better idea, she washed her face with the available hand soap and dried”
― Jean Hanff Korelitz, You Should Have Known

“(Was”
― Jean Hanff Korelitz, You Should Have Known

“Grace had read that the Spenser children followed a strictly macrobiotic diet—or that ultimate manifestation of New York real estate porn, the large laundry room photographed in Architectural Digest, with three uniformed laundresses ironing the zillion-thread-count sheets.”
― Jean Hanff Korelitz, You Should Have Known