Florence Gordon Quotes

“I know it sounds strange but it’s true. I mean that you’re open to life. You’re open to being surprised. You’re open to being changed by life. Most of us lose that quality in our twenties. I don’t know how you’ve managed to hang on to it, but you have.” The music was loud, and the people were loud.”
― Brian Morton, Florence Gordon

“Take the risk that you’ll end up regretting your speech, because it’s better than regretting your silence.”
― Brian Morton, Florence Gordon

“People, Florence thought as she put on her shoes. What do I need them for again?”
― Brian Morton, Florence Gordon

“She had a moment of engulfing sadness about this, about the way that even when we’re living through tragedy, the language we reach for, the only language available to us, is secondhand.”
― Brian Morton, Florence Gordon

“For a parent, time is not a one-way street. In Janine’s mind, the nineteen-year-old Emily was accompanied, shadowed, by the infant Emily, and the toddler Emily, and Emily in all her other incarnations. So when she came out with a shrewd perception or a sophisticated thought, it was always something to marvel at, because it was as if the five-year-old Emily were saying it too. A parent is perpetually thinking, “Where did she learn that?”
― Brian Morton, Florence Gordon

“Maybe it was three strikes, because not only was she an intellectual, she was a feminist. Which meant that if she ever managed to finish this book, reviewers”
― Brian Morton, Florence Gordon

“You have an unfinished quality that in a person of your age is an achievement.”
― Brian Morton, Florence Gordon

“zebras?”
― Brian Morton, Florence Gordon

“Saul”
― Brian Morton, Florence Gordon

“Be realistic! Demand the impossible!”
― Brian Morton, Florence Gordon

“he didn’t believe your worth was based on your attainments or your erudition or even your intelligence. Just about the only thing he valued was simple decency.”
― Brian Morton, Florence Gordon

“I know it sounds strange but it’s true. I mean that you’re open to life. You’re open to being surprised. You’re open to being changed by life. Most of us lose that quality in our twenties. I don’t know how you’ve managed to hang on to it, but you have.”
― Brian Morton, Florence Gordon

“One of the sad little secrets of the writing life is that it’s become like the movie business, where a movie has to “open big”; if a book hasn’t caught anybody’s interest in the first two weeks of its life, it’s not going to.”
― Brian Morton, Florence Gordon

“I’ve become one of those horrible women who goes around saying things like, ‘Now that I am old, I shall wear more purple.”
― Brian Morton, Florence Gordon