The Vacationers Quotes

“Families were nothing more than hope cast out in a wide net, everyone wanting only the best.”
― Emma Straub, The Vacationers

“There was nothing in life harder or more important than agreeing every morning to stay the course, to go back to your forgotten self of so many years ago, and to make the same decision. Marriages, like ships, needed steering, and steady hands at the wheel.”
― Emma Straub, The Vacationers

“Once Charles arrived, Franny would start laughing the way she had when she was twenty-four, and the rest of them could start setting one another on fire for all she cared. That’s what best friends did: ruin people for everyone else.”
― Emma Straub, The Vacationers

“So much of being a good friend was knowing when to keep your mouth shut.”
― Emma Straub, The Vacationers

“A good swimming pool could do that—make the rest of the world seem impossibly insignificant, as far away as the surface of the moon.”
― Emma Straub, The Vacationers

“She’d read all of Jane Austen that year—Austen was good, but when you told people you liked Pride and Prejudice, they expected you to be all sunshine and wedding veils, and Sylvia preferred the rainy moors. The Brontës weren’t afraid to let someone die of consumption, which Sylvia respected.”
― Emma Straub, The Vacationers

“Life would be so much more interesting if one could ask all the questions one wanted to and expect honest answers.”
― Emma Straub, The Vacationers

“There was nothing in life harder or more important than agreeing every morning to stay the course, to go back to your forgotten self of so many years ago, and to make the same decision.”
― Emma Straub, The Vacationers

“Maybe that was the key to all good relationships, having oceans of time apart.”
― Emma Straub, The Vacationers

“Some people smoked crack in alleyways. Franny ate chocolate. On the scale of things, it seemed entirely reasonable.”
― Emma Straub, The Vacationers

“That’s what best friends did: ruin people for everyone else.”
― Emma Straub, The Vacationers

“They had chosen to make the leap and, having leapt, were delighted to find that the world was even more beautiful than they’d hoped.”
― Emma Straub, The Vacationers

“Having a daughter whose company he actually enjoyed was one of Jim’s favorite accomplishments. The odds were against you, in all matters of family planning. You couldn’t choose to have a boy or a girl; you couldn’t choose to have a child who favored you over the other parent. You could only accept what came along naturally...”
― Emma Straub, The Vacationers

“She had the wild look of someone who hadn’t slept in twenty-four hours, with purplish semicircles underneath both her eyes. Being eighteen was like being made out of rubber and cocaine.”
― Emma Straub, The Vacationers

“Like most things, sex got better with age until one hit a certain plateau, and then it was like breakfast, unlikely to change unless one ran out of milk and was forced to improvise.”
― Emma Straub, The Vacationers

“Yes, it was true that Franny had gotten thicker in the last decade, but that was what happened unless you were a high-functioning psychotic, and she had other things to think about. Franny knew plenty of women who had chosen to prioritize the eternal youth of their bodies, and they were all miserable creatures, their taut triceps unable to conceal their dissatisfaction with their empty stomachs and unfulfilling lives. Franny liked to eat, and to feed people, and she wasn’t embarrassed that her body displayed such proclivities.”
― Emma Straub, The Vacationers

“It is not so much a matter of traveling as of getting away; which of us has not some pain to dull, or some yoke to cast off? —GEORGE SAND, Winter in Majorca”
― Emma Straub, The Vacationers

“The Internet was excellent for confirming one's worst fears about the human race.”
― Emma Straub, The Vacationers

“It was crazy, what young people believed was possible, what so many earnest twenty-three-year-olds took for granted about the rest of their lives.”
― Emma Straub, The Vacationers

“but there was no way that any man would ever have typed up a list of instructions and usual information for his home, unless of course he were being paid to do so. It was the kind of thoughtful touch that only women were intrinsically capable of, no matter what any quack therapist on television said.”
― Emma Straub, The Vacationers

“the major accomplishment of her life was producing two children who seemed to like each other even when no one else was looking,”
― Emma Straub, The Vacationers

“It didn’t matter that the bride’s dress was too tight or hadn’t come from Vera Wang—she was happy. She wanted to be with this man for the rest of her life, and he felt just the same way. They had chosen to make the leap and, having leapt, were delighted to find that the world was even more beautiful than they’d hoped.”
― Emma Straub, The Vacationers

“Having a daughter whose company he actually enjoyed was one of his favorite accomplishments.”
― Emma Straub, The Vacationers

“to be a hypocrite or a liar? Jim wasn’t”
― Emma Straub, The Vacationers

“Leaving. That was the word she liked to use. Not going away, which implied a return, but leaving, which implied a jet plane.”
― Emma Straub, The Vacationers

“people smoked crack in alleyways. Franny ate chocolate. On the scale of things, it seemed entirely reasonable.”
― Emma Straub, The Vacationers

“She’d gone to one horrible Overeaters Anonymous meeting in her early forties, in a stuffy room in the basement of a church, and the degree to which she recognized herself in the other men and women sitting on the folding chairs had scared her away for good. It might be a problem, but it was her problem, thank you very much. Some”
― Emma Straub, The Vacationers

“Part of the fun of going on vacation with so many people was supposed to be that you didn’t all have to be together all the time”
― Emma Straub, The Vacationers

“cast out in a wide net, everyone wanting only the best.”
― Emma Straub, The Vacationers

“Families were nothing more than hope cast our in a wide net, everyone wanting only the best. Even the poor souls who had children in an attempt to rescue a dying marriage were doing so out of a misguided hopefulness.”
― Emma Straub, The Vacationers