Loving Frank Quotes

“Don't you see what's happened? You wanted to be in love again. To feel that feeling where a man you hardly know gazes into your eyes and seems to be the only human being who ever understood the real you.”
― Nancy Horan, Loving Frank

“It has always been on the written page that the world has come into focus for me. If I can piece all these bits of memory together with the diaries and letters and the scribbled thoughts that clutter my mind and bookshelves, then maybe I can explain what happened. Maybe the worlds I have inhabited for the past seven years will assume order and logic and wholeness on paper. Maybe I can tell my story in a way that is useful to someone else.”
― Nancy Horan, Loving Frank

“It's wonderful to feel desired. There's a sense of power in it, really.”
― Nancy Horan, Loving Frank

“As he watches the sun rise, what grieves him is that he failed her. He thinks of the terror she felt. They tell him it was quick, as if that will somehow confine the horror.”
― Nancy Horan, Loving Frank

“I'm like the trunk of a cactus, I suppose." she told him. "I take in a dose of culture and time with friends, then I retreat and go live on it for a while until I get thirsty again.”
― Nancy Horan, Loving Frank

“There's a phrase over the door; she called to him. "Haec est porta coeli."..."Here is the gate to heaven.”
― Nancy Horan, Loving Frank

“It's not good to live so much inside oneself. It's a self-imposed exile, really. It makes you different.”
― Nancy Horan, Loving Frank

“I love you so much. I love you enough that I want to stay separate from you. You're an extraordinary man, Frank Wright. I could so easily lose myself in your world and never make a world of my own. And where would that leave us? We'd both be bored stupid.”
― Nancy Horan, Loving Frank

“She had found more than peace of mind. She had discovered the state of her soul set down in ink.”
― Nancy Horan, Loving Frank

“[My father] had a name for the bottom of the sky--'the hem of heaven.”
― Nancy Horan, Loving Frank

“How small we humans are. All our scrambling around, trying to buttress ourselves against death. All our efforts to insulate ourselves against uncertainty with codes of behavior and meaningless busyness.”
― Nancy Horan, Loving Frank

“Together greet life's solemn real.
Together own one glad ideal,
Together laugh, together ache,
And think one thought- "Each other's sake,"
And hope one hope- in new-world weather,
To still go on, and go together.”
― Nancy Horan, Loving Frank

“Two years in a child's life is the distance between stars.”
― Nancy Horan, Loving Frank

“I don't buy junk. When I buy something, it's got to be perfection or I don't want it. You won't find me coming home with five cheap suits, one for each day of the week. I'd rather have one perfect suit or none.”
― Nancy Horan, Loving Frank

“When both lovers yearn to become entirely one being, to free each other and to develop each other to the greatest perfection, this is the highest form of love possible between a man and a woman....To experience such love is to feel oneself doubled. Such feeling liberates and deepens the personality, inspires us to noble deeds and works of genius.”
― Nancy Horan, Loving Frank

“Take my love for granted," he said, "and I shall do the same for you.”
― Nancy Horan, Loving Frank

“We are ourselves what we appreciate and no more.”
― Nancy Horan, Loving Frank

“Why is the heart that is broken considered so much more valuable than the one or the two who must cause the”
― Nancy Horan, Loving Frank

“Tell her happiness is just practice," he said. "If only she acted happy, she would be happy.”
― Nancy Horan, Loving Frank

“Stay the course, daughter. But show yourself some kindness along the way.”
― Nancy Horan, Loving Frank

“If Catherine would just let go' had been their mantra for so long. Now Mamah understood Catherine's dilemma better. She wouldn't divorce Frank because she feared he wouldn't pay her child support and alimony. And there was revenge to be sure: By refusing to divorce after twenty years of accommodating him, Catherine was squeezing recompense from Frank for a longstanding emotional debt. But that was only part of it. Catherine held on because she still loved him, and remembered what it was like to be loved by him. Nothing else in the world compared to the incandescent joy Frank brought to his best beloved.”
― Nancy Horan, Loving Frank

“I never meant to bring all of it upon you. Surely you understand that. I have loved you and admired you all my life. You are the only true hero I have. I owe you everything.'
Lizzie reached out and stripped leaves off a twig. 'You always wanted to do something big. Something important.'
'Is that such a terrible thing? You're the one who told me once that the world can't forgive ambition in a woman.'
'I never got to find out. My ambitions never seemed to figure into things. You were away at the university when Mother got sick, so it fell to Jessie and me. And you were already married by the time Jessie passed. Your life was set. Suddenly there was a niece to raise, and then...' Lizzie paused. ' Then you had your personality to go discover.' She tossed away a fistful of leaves. 'You had everything. You had a wonderful man who adored you, beautiful healthy children. Freedom. No money worries. A nanny and a housekeeper. You didn't have to work, and Edwin never asked a thing of you. Do you realize what you gave up for Frank Wright? The kind of life most women-- most feminists-- dream of.”
― Nancy Horan, Loving Frank

“With Mr. Wright, you just grab hold of the tail of the kite. If you can hang on, you’re going to go places you never thought possible.”
― Nancy Horan, Loving Frank

“Tell me everything. He might as well have said, “Take off your dress.”
― Nancy Horan, Loving Frank

“Every landscape has its own latent poetry.”
― Nancy Horan, Loving Frank

“Ogni mia fibra, E’posseduta dall’amor.” My every fiber is possessed by love.”
― Nancy Horan, Loving Frank

“Mamah realized she cared for him for the very reasons he made other people squirm. He was fearlessly outspoken. And he was eccentric, but it was the kind of eccentricity she had come to admire in her father. Anyone as attuned as Frank was to nature’s order, anyone raised to reason outside the mainstream, was not going to be penned in very well by society’s rules. Her father had responded to the order of the natural world, too. He was more interested in the habits of wasps than the politics of Oak Park. He hadn’t cared a fig about fashion or the neighbors’ opinions about the goats he kept in their suburban backyard. He was a “one-er,” as he called stubborn nonconformists like himself, and he had nourished the same independence in his children. Frank was like that. His ears and eyes and heart were tuned to seek truth in places where other people didn’t look. In this, and in so many other ways, she felt a kindred spirit to him.”
― Nancy Horan, Loving Frank

“The expression annoyed her, as if women didn’t use intelligence and experience—just as men did—to make wise decisions.”
― Nancy Horan, Loving Frank

“It has always been on the written page that the world has come into focus for me.”
― Nancy Horan, Loving Frank

“Staring out the window, she tried to imagine a time in the future when she would explain to her children this understanding. They would have to be adults to comprehend it. But she believed they would see that her choice to leave their father was not meant as a cruel self-indulgence geared to make them unhappy. Rather, it was an act of love for life.”
― Nancy Horan, Loving Frank