Mrs. Quotes

“Children pick up on themes—love, anger; more basically, warmth, cold. Tell yourself it’s the details that scar children for life and you avoid the inconvenient truth that it is in fact the ongoing themes. Control. Disappointment. Entitlement. Narcissism. Deprivation. Frustration. Sorrow.”
― Caitlin Macy, Mrs.

“When you were having what would become your happiest memories in the future, you didn't know you were having them.”
― Caitlin Macy, Mrs.

“Distress, however much you tried to compartmentalize it, put you in an illogical frame of mind.”
― Caitlin Macy, Mrs.

“It seemed comeuppance would slam down like the steel grille of a discount electronics store”
― Caitlin Macy, Mrs.

“All you could hope for with your second half century: that things wouldn’t piss you off. You rarely got that.”
― Caitlin Macy, Mrs.

“It was neurotic, nowadays, when the meritocracy had never been more ascendant, to dwell on the accident of birth, but the Skinkers brought you up short, reminded you that the fancy restaurants and four-star hotels, the idea of which you preoccupied yourself with, were middle-class treats, candies on sticks to keep you quiet in the bleacher seats…Better, maybe, to be like Gwen and eschew all that—“One of those people who like to eat at fancy restaurants” she would say of some acquaintance she had consigned to terminal mediocrity.”
― Caitlin Macy, Mrs.

“None of them could have traced the Voice’s exact provenance; most of the parents could but guess at the things that the Voice alluded to in its inimical diphthongs and non-rhotic nouns (charactah): the spankings and the cigarettes and the gin and tonics you didn’t waste the good gin on; the Mercedes 280 D with the matching hubcap plates, the sickly sweet smell of its perforated leather interior, Dick and the boys (now grown) joking about the “voodoo stick” on the long drive up to Maine, during which, out of principle, you never took a rest stop (and why would you, seeing as no one “hydrated” in those days).”
― Caitlin Macy, Mrs.

“Is that a DeKwan?” Jeannie blurted out, pointing to a massive abstract painting on the far wall—aggressive black slashes on daubed off-white. At once, she reviled herself for the question. She’d given in to the fateful impulse—the desire to make sure that Lally knew that she knew! The desire to somehow, in some way, put herself on equal footing with Lally Stein. I may not be able to buy contemporary art, but I do recognize it! But rich people and celebrities didn’t care if you knew!”
― Caitlin Macy, Mrs.

“Well, she respected that. That, she understood. She would have done as many squat-thrusts as it took. They threw you in together at these colleges because you were smart, got good grades, took BC calc, got a 5 on the AP Chem exam. No one warned you. No one told you what the expectations of your views were going to be.”
― Caitlin Macy, Mrs.

“People—Minnie—might have turned this into “We grew up together,” but it was nothing so proprietary as that she would have claimed. It was the most basic of connections they had, that was all—coming from the same place; ending up here. It was simply that she recognized Philippa. She had known her forever. Knew that there were certain knolls, certain elms and certain oaks along certain roads, certain bends in those roads, certain graveyards and plays of light Philippa had known as well. That’s all she would’ve claimed. If anyone had asked her what growing up there was like in the ’70s and ’80s, she would have said that the overarching principle, which she had been able to see only lately, in reflection, was a randomness. A randomness that had vanished, that this town, with its strivy parents—slotting in the schools and the lessons and the vacations and the camps; this kitchen; gut jobs; chain stores; the Internet—seemed determined to eliminate.”
― Caitlin Macy, Mrs.