The Wives of Los Alamos Quotes

“We felt that we were a portrait on the wall, more invisible the longer it had been in its location”
― TaraShea Nesbit, The Wives of Los Alamos

“The trouble with Oppenheimer, the famous but uninvolved scientist Einstein remarked, was that he loved a woman who did not love him back: the U.S. government.”
― TaraShea Nesbit, The Wives of Los Alamos

“The mountains still smelled to us like lavender and lemon verbena, and we hiked the Valle Grande, a mountain meadow the size of Manhattan that in spring became a purple field of wild irises. When we stopped walking we could hear the snakes rattling in the sagebrush.”
― TaraShea Nesbit, The Wives of Los Alamos

“We felt in control of ourselves, we felt hopeful that we had made the right choice, we felt weary, we felt all of thee things at the same time, but more so: we felt we could not turn back.”
― TaraShea Nesbit, The Wives of Los Alamos

“Or, for one of our mothers, the secret to a good marriage, she said, was sex.”
― TaraShea Nesbit, The Wives of Los Alamos

“Before we got married we asked our grandfathers, whose own marriages had lasted forty years or more, "What is the secret to a happy marriage? And they paused, looked down at their chicken salad, and said, 'You really have to like each other. After the attraction, you really have to like the person.'" ...our mothers tolds us...ask him how his day was. Take an interest in his profession.”
― TaraShea Nesbit , The Wives of Los Alamos

“A rose pattern burned out of a schoolgirl's blouse and made a floral tattoo on her shoulder. Had the world gone mad? We went home and held our children.”
― TaraShea Nesbit, The Wives of Los Alamos

“Mornings we woke and hoped something would arrive for us, but rarely did anything arrive. Because we felt powerless, we went to war over milk shortages, water shortages, maid services, and unfair housing arrangements.”
― TaraShea Nesbit, The Wives of Los Alamos

“On the highest slopes, the small leaves of the aspens quaked. And we listened to them-they were such exposed things holding on and making vulnerable, fluttering music-and this quaking gave us a peaceful feeling. We stood there thinking of nothing except leaves, leaves, leaves.

Or standing in this grove brought out the melancholy in us, and we felt a rush of sadness, in our throats, in our stomachs, in our necks, but it, too, was not attached to any one thing in particular. It was just this, the aspen leaves, not falling, but making the sound of holding on.”
― TaraShea Nesbit, The Wives of Los Alamos

“A few of us had the curse of truthfulness, which gave us little power.   N”
― TaraShea Nesbit, The Wives of Los Alamos

“Situation normal, all fouled up.   I”
― TaraShea Nesbit, The Wives of Los Alamos

“MORNINGS WE WOKE and hoped something would arrive for us, but rarely did anything arrive. Because we felt powerless, we went to war over milk shortages, water shortages, maid services, and unfair housing assignments. We said, Someone with one child should not have more help than someone with two. We said, A family that needs only two bedrooms should not get a home with three. The commissary should carry bottled artichoke hearts, the movie schedule should be changed, the neighbor’s dog snapped at our child and should be put down, we need a shoe repair service, we need faster mail service, the public laundry is overcrowded, the rifle range is too close.   W”
― TaraShea Nesbit, The Wives of Los Alamos

“No matter how alone we felt there were things we could never do as individuals. A woman cannot conspire with herself. Alone, we were not a pack, a choir, or a brigade. But together, we were a mob of women armed with baby bottles and canned goods, demanding a larger commissary, and we got it. We were more than I, we were Us. We were Us despite our desire for singularity.”
― TaraShea Nesbit, The Wives of Los Alamos

“Never tell someone they are wrong directly, and Start with questions to which the other person will answer yes.”
― TaraShea Nesbit, The Wives of Los Alamos

“How to Win Friends and Influence People”
― TaraShea Nesbit, The Wives of Los Alamos

“Fisher’s Los Alamos Experience, Jane Wilson and Charlotte Serber’s Standing By and Making Do: Women of Wartime Los Alamos, Eleanor Jette’s Inside Box 1663, Bernice Brode’s Tales of Los Alamos: Life on the Mesa 1943–1945, Leona Marshall Libby’s The Uranium People, Laura Fermi’s Atoms in the Family, Emily Yellin’s Our Mothers’ War, Studs Turkel’s “The Good War”, Jennet Conant’s 109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos, Jon Hunner’s, Inventing Los Alamos: The Growth of an Atomic Community, and Edith Warner’s In the Shadow of Los Alamos: Selected Writings.”
― TaraShea Nesbit, The Wives of Los Alamos

“He left and argued that all scientific research should be for the benefit for humanity, and that scientists cannot keep scientific curiosity and moral implications separate no matter how difficult it might be to predict how such discoveries might later be used.”
― TaraShea Nesbit, The Wives of Los Alamos

“What we learned was this: there were no ways to control unknown threats.”
― TaraShea Nesbit, The Wives of Los Alamos

“and our eyes caught on this sentence: The ultimate responsibility for our nation’s policy rests on its citizens and they can discharge such responsibilities wisely only if they are informed.”
― TaraShea Nesbit, The Wives of Los Alamos

“Our Bobbies pretended to change flat tires, our Cheryls were the best skiers, our Michaels threw rocks at the garbage men. They played Ring Around the Roses and held hands with other women's children for the first time. They bobbed for apples; they made Valentines.”
― Tarashea Nesbit, The Wives of Los Alamos

“We wanted more help or different help and we were told if we wanted more assistance we would need to have another baby.”
― TaraShea Nesbit, The Wives of Los Alamos

“We were a group of people connecting both honestly and dishonestly, appearing composed at dusk and bedraggled at day break, committed, whether we wanted it or not, to share conditions of need, agitation, and sometimes joy, which is to say: we were a community.”
― TaraShea Nesbit, The Wives of Los Alamos

“A woman cannot conspire with herself.”
― TaraShea Nesbit, The Wives of Los Alamos