Be Frank With Me Quotes

“Youth isn't wasted on the young, literature is.”
― Julia Claiborne Johnson, Be Frank With Me

“What I love about you, Alice,” Mr. Vargas said, “is the way you simultaneously give yourself too much credit for everything that happens and not enough. Listening to you makes me feel young again.”
― Julia Claiborne Johnson, Be Frank With Me

“With children in the house, you’re on call around the clock whether you like it or not. You don’t get the luxury of enough sleep when that was what you needed most to keep yourself from going over the edge.”
― Julia Claiborne Johnson, Be Frank With Me

“If you think you'll always let people down, that's all you'll ever do, I said.”
― Julia Claiborne Johnson, Be Frank With Me

“Things fifty years old or older are considered ‘antique.’ Anything thirty years old to fifty is called ‘vintage.’ So I’m not even close to vintage, although of course you are swiftly approaching that.” “Thanks. So what does that make you?” “I’m a child. My mother, however, is antique.” “Well, let’s not tell her that, okay?” “Why not? It’s true.” “Lots of true things aren’t polite to say.”
― Julia Claiborne Johnson, Be Frank With Me

“To pick you up, Frank, I'm going to have to put both my hands on you", I said. "That will be alright", he said. "Until you master the art of levitation.”
― Julia Claiborne Johnson, Be Frank With Me

“My mother always said that the best way to connect with anybody who was a mother was to find a way to compliment her child.”
― Julia Claiborne Johnson, Be Frank With Me

“I believe there’s another dozen thoughts lined up behind each one I’m aware of.”
― Julia Claiborne Johnson, Be Frank With Me

“those jumbo look-at-me/don’t-look-at-me glasses”
― Julia Claiborne Johnson, Be Frank With Me

“They're probably mad because you're smart and make good grades. Kids are stupid like that. The teachers love you, though, right?"
"I'll tell you what my mom says teachers don't love," said Frank. "Being corrected.”
― Julia Claiborne Johnson, Be Frank With Me

“Frank will be okay, Alice," Mr. Vargas said. "He's an odd duck, but brilliant children often are. I make myself out to be," he said. "I'm worried, yes. But I'd worry more if she didn't have Frank. She's all he got, and she knows it.”
― Julia Claiborne Johnson, Be Frank With Me

“One friend is what he needs. One friend is enough for anybody.”
― Julia Claiborne Johnson, Be Frank With Me

“His circuits overloaded.”
― Julia Claiborne Johnson, Be Frank With Me

“Then let’s get you dried off and into your pj’s.” “‘Let’s get out of these wet clothes and into a dry martini,’” he said. “Robert Benchley.” I laughed. I was so relieved he wasn’t dead that I would have laughed at anything. “I’ve been waiting all my life to say that,” Frank said.”
― Julia Claiborne Johnson, Be Frank With Me

“I go to sleep exhausted,” she said. “I wake up tired.” Yes.”
― Julia Claiborne Johnson, Be Frank With Me

“Sometimes just explaining your predicament--to a bartender, a priest, the old woman in a shift and flip-flops cleaning the lint traps in the Laundromat dryers--is all it takes to see a way out of it.”
― Julia Claiborne Johnson, Be Frank With Me

“It had been nice to be so sure of myself. Now that I didn’t have that compass anymore, I’d never felt so lost. I dropped onto the red love seat and hated myself for a good long time. Here are some adjectives I aimed at myself: Self-righteous. Judgmental. Perfidious. Smug. The kind of person who’s convinced the world would be a better place if everybody else would just shut up and listen. I”
― Julia Claiborne Johnson, Be Frank With Me

“From that high up, language or the lack of it didn't matter much. The swirling currents of people were way better than anything on TV. Even on cable. Except, possibly, the Armenian Channel.”
― Julia Claiborne Johnson, Be Frank With Me

“Energy spent on worrying about a future you can’t control is energy wasted. It doesn’t do anybody one bit of good. I”
― Julia Claiborne Johnson, Be Frank With Me

“Youth isn't wasted on the young. Literature is.”
― Julia Claiborne Johnson, Be Frank With Me

“Later, Xander said, "It's not about you, you know. What Mimi hates is how her life has turned out. It isn't how she thought it would be back when she was your age and on the top of the world.”
― Julia Claiborne Johnson, Be Frank With Me

“but I’ve found the best way to handle anyone difficult—rich worrywart moms, the famished Manhattan vegan ordering a late lunch—is to exude the bland calm of the heavily medicated and go about my business.”
― Julia Claiborne Johnson, Be Frank With Me