American Fantasy Quotes

“Either way, the music wasn’t the issue. It was the individual people, like going to summer camp and being stuck on a wooden platform in the middle of the woods with eight mean girls who called her a lesbian, which was true but not the way they said it, like it was an insult.”
― Emma Straub, American Fantasy

“Annie had never lived alone before the divorce, but now she was used to it and actually enjoyed living by her rhythm and only her rhythm. She hadn’t really thought about how much she would be in a crowd on the ship—it was sort of like commuting through Times Square three times a day, if all the men in New York City had been raptured away.”
― Emma Straub, American Fantasy

“Cruise ships really were incredible, Annie had to admit, that they could contain so many different environments at the same time, like a zoo with different climates for lions and penguins and tropical birds. It made her feel better about all the ads she’d ever placed for cruises, though the ones that advertised in Opera Weekly were very, very different than this one, she imagined.”
― Emma Straub, American Fantasy

“Was it possible to be grateful and miserable at the same time? He was trying to figure it out, life, but no one would let him, no one but Dr. Robert. Everyone was worried about their own stake, their own bank accounts, their own consequences. Being in therapy somehow didn’t help the people around you, even though it felt like it should.”
― Emma Straub, American Fantasy

“One did hear stories about men doing better the second time around, with all that testosterone and ambition out of their system. How nice for Emily.”
― Emma Straub, American Fantasy

“All around Annie, women were dancing and singing, and for a second, she closed her eyes and thought, No one else will ever understand this, except of course everyone standing beside her, who all understood it perfectly. This was why people turned to religion or watched the Super Bowl at a sports bar instead of alone in their living room. It felt good to be a part of something where your passion was celebrated instead of mocked. They were all in this together, the men and the women, a symbiotic organism. Annie was tired, but she knew that there was no going to bed, not yet.”
― Emma Straub, American Fantasy

“She’d never been surrounded by women like this, never in her life. She’d never been in a sorority or gone to an all-women school. Even the Women’s March had had significantly more men than this.”
― Emma Straub, American Fantasy

“When Madison was small, she had loved Boy Talk—the old pictures, the songs, the dances. Steffani had always poked fun, but now Madison was worse. She made TikTok videos of herself pretending to throw up with Boy Talk playing in the background. Madison had hundreds of thousands of followers, more than Boy Talk did on their official account. Keith slid his phone back into his pocket.”
― Emma Straub, American Fantasy

“There was always something about Keith for someone to fix.”
― Emma Straub, American Fantasy

“Keith didn’t know where to put everything he felt about Corey—being around him made Keith feel sad and jealous and angry all at once, and that made talking hard, like there were six people living inside his body and each of them fighting over who got to control his mouth.”
― Emma Straub, American Fantasy

“When Annie was young”
― Emma Straub, American Fantasy