Modern Lovers Quotes

“Choices were easy to make until you realized how long life could be.”
― Emma Straub, Modern Lovers

“Why bother getting married, going through all the pomp and pageantry, if you didn't think it was going to last? It was far easier to live in sin and not have to deal with the paperwork.”
― Emma Straub, Modern Lovers

“There wasn't enough time in the world, not for the things that mattered most.”
― Emma Straub, Modern Lovers

“Elizabeth ran her finger along the windowsill, gathering dust. The view was almost exactly the same as from her own bedroom, only a few degrees shifted. She could still see the Rosens' place, with its red door and folding shutters, and the Martinez house, with its porch swing and the dog bowl. She'd heard once that what made you a real New Yorker was when you could remember back three laters -- the place on the corner that had been a bakery and then a barbershop before it was a cell-phone store, or the restaurant that had been Italian, then Mexican, then Cuban. The city was a palimpsest, a Mod Podged pileup or old signage and other people's failures. Newcomers saw only what was in front of them, but people who had been there long enough were always looking at two or three other places simultaneously. The IRT, Canal Jeans, the Limelight. So much of the city she'd fallen in love with was gone, but then again, that's how it worked. It was your job to remember. At least the bridges were still there. Some things were too heavy to take down.”
― Emma Straub, Modern Lovers

“Happy" was a word for sorority girls and clowns, and those were two distinctly fucked-up groups of people.”
― Emma Straub, Modern Lovers

“So what if they weren’t as happy as they’d ever been? They were adults, with a nearly grown child. “Happy” was a word for sorority girls and clowns, and those were two distinctly fucked-up groups of people. They were just wading through the muck like everyone else.”
― Emma Straub, Modern Lovers

“Timing was everything—that was more and more obvious the older you got, when you finally understood that the universe wasn’t held together in any way that made sense. There was no order, there was no plan. It was all about what you’d had for breakfast, and what kind of mood you were in when you walked down a certain hallway, and whether the person who tried to kiss you had good breath or bad. There was no fate. Life was just happenstance and luck, bound together by the desire for order.”
― Emma Straub, Modern Lovers

“I mean, it's never too late to decide to do something else. Becoming an adult doesn't mean that you suddenly have all the answers.”
― emma straub, Modern Lovers

“That was another thing Ruby would miss about New York, if she were leaving: she's miss how much space people gave you. You could have a fucking sobbing fit on the subway and no one would mess with you. You could barf in a garbage can on the street corner and no one would mess with you. If you were giving off invisible vibes, people respected that. People thought New Yorkers were rude, but really they were just leaving you to your own stuff. It was respectful! In a city with so many people, a New Yorker would always pretend not to see you when you didn't want to be seen.”
― Emma Straub, Modern Lovers

“There was nothing about youth that was fair: the young hadn’t done anything to deserve it, and the old hadn’t done anything to drive it away.”
― Emma Straub, Modern Lovers

“Dogs were gloriously uncomplicated creatures—food and play and sleep and love, that was all they needed.”
― Emma Straub, Modern Lovers

“They were a power couple, rich in kale and quinoa and fizzy glasses of rosé.”
― Emma Straub, Modern Lovers

“Choices were easy to make until you realized how long life could be. It”
― Emma Straub, Modern Lovers

“Taylor Swift had probably slept with more people than she had, and good for her.”
― emma straub, Modern Lovers

“They were just wading through the muck like everyone else.”
― Emma Straub, Modern Lovers

“Going to one school from age five to age eighteen was like being buried in amber. It wasn't even like his walls, which were covered with layers of things - you had to be the same person from start to finish, with no big cognitive jumps.”
― Emma Straub, Modern Lovers

“People didn’t take turns having difficult moments; they came all together, like rainstorms and puddles.”
― Emma Straub, Modern Lovers

“All summer, her parents treated her like she was made of glass, and she didn’t understand why until it was over and they were packing the car full of pillows and boxes and books. Unlike Ruby, Jane had siblings—two brothers and a sister, all younger than she was. Like Ruby, Jane had had no idea what it meant for her parents to have their oldest child get ready to leave home. Leave home! It sounded so final. At the time, Jane had thought her mother was experiencing some very prolonged kind of stroke, where she was always blinking back tears and staring at Jane like she was the new episode of Dallas. But she understood it now. Children wanted to go. Children knew that they were old enough—it was prehistoric, baked-in knowledge. Only the parents still thought they were kids. Everyone else—tobacco, the voting booth, porn shops—said otherwise. Jane moved”
― Emma Straub, Modern Lovers

“Middle-aged rock ’n’ roll hobbyists were about as thrilling as old ladies gardening, and significantly more embarrassing.”
― Emma Straub, Modern Lovers

“Her hair was straight and naturally blond, which is to say a light, innocuous brown, and cut short, just below her ears, with little bangs like a schoolgirl’s. She liked to think that she looked like a gamine, but that probably wasn’t true anymore, if it ever had been.”
― Emma Straub, Modern Lovers

“The city was a palimpsest, a Mod Podged pileup of old signage and other people’s failures.”
― Emma Straub, Modern Lovers

“door slammed upstairs, and then there were feet on the stairs, the nimble herd of elephants contained by a single teenage body.”
― Emma Straub, Modern Lovers

“She’d heard once that what made you a real New Yorker was when you could remember back three layers—the place on the corner that had been a bakery and then a barbershop before it was a cell-phone store, or the restaurant that had been Italian, then Mexican, then Cuban.”
― Emma Straub, Modern Lovers

“It was her favorite time of day, the window of time between lunch and dinner.”
― Emma Straub, Modern Lovers

“People thought New Yorkers were rude, but really they were just leaving you to your own stuff. It was respectful! In a city with so many people, a New Yorker would always pretend not to see you when you didn’t want to be seen.”
― Emma Straub, Modern Lovers

“It was always nice to carry a big bowl of something homemade over to Zoe’s house, because it felt like being back in that potluck-rich, money-poor twilight zone known as one’s twenties.”
― Emma Straub, Modern Lovers

“When he was a teenager, anyone over the age of twenty looked like a grown-up, with boring clothes and a blurry face, only slightly more invisible than Charlie Brown’s teacher, but life had changed. Now everyone looked equally young, as if they could be twenty or thirty or even flirting with forty, and he couldn’t tell the difference. Maybe it was just that he was now staring in the opposite direction.”
― Emma Straub, Modern Lovers

“an ancient concept, like feudalism, or jazz being cool.”
― Emma Straub, Modern Lovers

“There was no fate. Life was just happenstance and luck, bound together by the desire for order.”
― Emma Straub, Modern Lovers

“Urgency was for younger people, for teenagers and dramatic twenty-somethings, for young hypochondriac parents. When you got older, urgency was for hearing that your parents had fallen ill, and you needed to book a flight as quickly as possible without maxing out your credit card. In between, things were sort of calm, running on autopilot.”
― Emma Straub, Modern Lovers