Back Talk Quotes

“We called our mothers by their first names only in their absence. We were still good girls then, but even if we'd been brave enough to try, we wouldn't have known what to rebel against.”
― Danielle Lazarin, Back Talk

“I believed then that a man might be interested in me only for my intelligence.”
― Danielle Lazarin, Back Talk

“I don't know a lot of women in Paris. They seem to be from another life of mine, and when I transfer to a college in California the next year, I'll be hungry for them but I'll have forgotten how to be around them. It will take years to understand the different things that women want from me than men do.”
― Danielle Lazarin, Back Talk

“There's something about me at that age that is trustworthy, that makes men think I will not judge them, though I do, all the time; I just keep it to myself. I am not beautiful, but I am pretty enough. That year, and for years after, I hold on to the pretty parts, to the appearance of being open. If only I had allowed myself to look mean in those photos.”
― Danielle Lazarin, Back Talk

“Claire sensed that her mother wanted all the ugliness of her daughter's growing up over with, as though the pain she was sure to experience was best to happen quickly. Claire wanted these years before adulthood, ugly as they might be, to take their time. She wanted her mother to be wrong.”
― Danielle Lazarin, Back Talk

“I wanted it to mean something, something I didn’t know or understand—someone, I hoped.”
― Danielle Lazarin, Back Talk

“She could say, You didn't think we'd be safe here, did you? but he'd think she was calling him a fool, which, really, she is. But she understands, too, that someone in the family has to be the one who forgets just enough every now and then, so they can keep moving forward.”
― Danielle Lazarin, Back Talk

“In my family, someone is always saying, That's not how I remember it, and it's become a joke, how many versions of the stories there are, how no one can leave any story alone till it's mangled and full of contradictions and maybe, by then, seemingly invented entirely.”
― Danielle Lazarin, Back Talk