All This Could Be Yours Quotes

“Not ever was there a time when that man’s penis stayed put where it was supposed to be, instead living its life as a free-flying dilettante, a party penis, as if it were some sort of rich-kid celebrity DJ hitting new hot spots, London, Paris, Ibiza, except instead of those cities it would be a paralegal’s vagina instead.”
― Jami Attenberg, All This Could Be Yours: A Searing Southern Family Drama About Confronting Bad Men and Toxic Legacy

“This was why men exhausted her so. It was a wonder the world didn't collapse daily from the weight of men's egos, she thought.”
― Jami Attenberg, All This Could Be Yours

“Men never really wanted your help anyway, she thought. They wanted you to do things for them, but it would never be thought of as help so much as required service.”
― Jami Attenberg, All This Could Be Yours: A Searing Southern Family Drama About Confronting Bad Men and Toxic Legacy

“Although in principle both women believed in love, neither of them believed in romance. It was all a performance for them, what women had to do for men, what men had to do for women—it was a manner of assessing each other’s value. Cora had taken an economics class in college and was fairly certain her vagina was a capitalist tool.”
― Jami Attenberg, All This Could Be Yours: A Searing Southern Family Drama About Confronting Bad Men and Toxic Legacy

“By late August, most New Orleanians have grown accustomed to the summer heat. They are not fond of it, but they know it. It has been hot since April. Was there ever a time when it was not this hot in New Orleans? They can no longer recall. Their will has been broken. Wake up, it’s hot. All day, hot. Nighttime, it feels cooler, but it’s a lie; it’s still hot. And wet. Everyone’s skin glows. People feel sexy and miserable at the same time. Hide inside. Hydrate. Shield yourself. Too hot.”
― Jami Attenberg, All This Could Be Yours: A Searing Southern Family Drama About Confronting Bad Men and Toxic Legacy

“And that was the day she invented it, this particular glazed expression of hers. She had created it to please her father, but it had served her well in her life. When she wore it, most men thought she was listening to them, and most women knew that the conversation was over.”
― Jami Attenberg, All This Could Be Yours: A Searing Southern Family Drama About Confronting Bad Men and Toxic Legacy

“I don't know how to make you happy without making me unhappy.”
― Jami Attenberg, All This Could Be Yours

“He did bad things. Even though he thought he was the hero.”
― Jami Attenberg, All This Could Be Yours

“You can be happy about a lot of things in your life, yet just one thing can make you miserable.”
― Jami Attenberg, All This Could Be Yours: A Searing Southern Family Drama About Confronting Bad Men and Toxic Legacy

“She had given up on her parents years ago. Things would never be honest between them. So why bother with any relationship at all?”
― Jami Attenberg, All This Could Be Yours: A Searing Southern Family Drama About Confronting Bad Men and Toxic Legacy

“Avery was stretched out after breakfast on the bottom bunk, eyes glazed and dreamy, staring up at the names of the girls who had slept there before her, scrawled on the bottom of the bed above. Who knew there were so many names? Who was the first to sign it? Abby, Natasha, Tori, Latoya, and a few dozen more. Laying claim. Avery wanted to add her own name, but she wasn’t sure she existed yet like the rest of them. Or, for example, like snakes did. It was Snake Week at camp. They existed, because they knew their purpose. They slithered, they hunted their prey. Avery was twelve; what did she do? She ate, she breathed, she did her homework. But what did that accomplish? What if snakes were her purpose? She thought of those she loved, which Homo sapiens. Her mother, her father, her cousin Sadie, whom she never saw but texted with constantly, her grandmother, she supposed, her grandfather . . . The cabin door opened. It was a counselor, Gabrielle, the one who didn’t shave her bikini line.”
― Jami Attenberg, All This Could Be Yours

“It was not about him loving her. They’d had so many ebbs and flows. They were in this life together; what they needed from each other was clearly defined. In these moments she felt they were connected by so much: distance, space, money, silence, support. And every so often the acknowledgment of each other’s humanity.”
― Jami Attenberg, All This Could Be Yours: A Searing Southern Family Drama About Confronting Bad Men and Toxic Legacy

“But when she leaves him, she misses him like crazy, because he’s the only dad she has, and he’s hers, and he’s smart and handsome and successful, and he spoils her with everything but his attention. It’s confusing. Sadie’s confused. And the result is, she hates him. Although in twenty years, at his third wedding, this final time to someone age-appropriate, she whispers to her date, “Not exactly a role model, but he was a good time.” So at least there was that.”
― Jami Attenberg, All This Could Be Yours: A Searing Southern Family Drama About Confronting Bad Men and Toxic Legacy

“He had been good with presents, she’ll give him that, that ghost. Payoffs were his specialty.”
― Jami Attenberg, All This Could Be Yours: A Searing Southern Family Drama About Confronting Bad Men and Toxic Legacy

“There was Barbra, sitting among all her objects, all of the things she loved best in the world; a tableau of capitalism.”
― Jami Attenberg, All This Could Be Yours: A Searing Southern Family Drama About Confronting Bad Men and Toxic Legacy

“The amount of work that had to be put in to protect the self-esteem of men when women should be worrying instead about building their own. This was why men exhausted her so. It was a wonder the world didn’t collapse daily from the weight of men’s egos, she thought.”
― Jami Attenberg, All This Could Be Yours: A Searing Southern Family Drama About Confronting Bad Men and Toxic Legacy

“(Cock size was a thing she hadn’t talked about since college, now that she thought about it. Who discusses such things when they get older? Who has the leisure time?)”
― Jami Attenberg, All This Could Be Yours: A Searing Southern Family Drama About Confronting Bad Men and Toxic Legacy

“It’s just that we want to love them, these men,” said Alex. An intensely bittersweet sensation riveted her body. “We really do.” “I don’t,” said her daughter. “You might someday,” Alex said. “Never.”
― Jami Attenberg, All This Could Be Yours: A Searing Southern Family Drama About Confronting Bad Men and Toxic Legacy

“She had refined her brain as much as possible to not give a fuck about what her father thought, and yet, every once in a while, she still saw herself through his eyes, heard his voice in her head, although it was not him, specifically, but a collective male vision, what she imagined men to be. And then she caught herself assessing her physical form, and it was not with love, no joy at its bounty, but rather through a skewed, screwed-up lens.”
― Jami Attenberg, All This Could Be Yours: A Searing Southern Family Drama About Confronting Bad Men and Toxic Legacy

“There was nothing particularly extraordinary about the crimes he committed, Barbra thought, except that when he was caught, he was never held accountable, and even that was no big surprise.)”
― Jami Attenberg, All This Could Be Yours: A Searing Southern Family Drama About Confronting Bad Men and Toxic Legacy

“She had done everything he wanted, and tonight it didn’t matter. He was the man who preferred the empty room all along. Not these things, not these children, not her. He wanted his steak and his wine and his Scotch, and a young waitress he could bully to bring it to him, and after that, where he slept didn’t matter.”
― Jami Attenberg, All This Could Be Yours: A Searing Southern Family Drama About Confronting Bad Men and Toxic Legacy

“Alex was delighted and astonished with her mother for behaving as a mother should for once.”
― Jami Attenberg, All This Could Be Yours: A Searing Southern Family Drama About Confronting Bad Men and Toxic Legacy

“Barbra joined her at the table and sipped from an enormous glass of water filled with lemon slices. Ah, yes, and there’s her lunch, she thought.”
― Jami Attenberg, All This Could Be Yours: A Searing Southern Family Drama About Confronting Bad Men and Toxic Legacy

“She ran off the hate she had for herself, ingrained since a young age from a mesmerizing array of influences: things her father said and did, things her mother didn’t say and do, magazines, television, girls she went to high school with, a hundred men whistling at her on the street, America in general. She loathed herself, she forgave herself. She loathed them, she did not forgive them.”
― Jami Attenberg, All This Could Be Yours: A Searing Southern Family Drama About Confronting Bad Men and Toxic Legacy

“Sadie’s smile a metallic gleam of the most expensive, longest-running batch of braces in history, like some well-loved, sentimental Broadway musical.”
― Jami Attenberg, All This Could Be Yours: A Searing Southern Family Drama About Confronting Bad Men and Toxic Legacy

“Meanwhile, Alex’s daughter was away for the summer, too, in Colorado with her father (supposedly hiking, likely in front of an array of screens),”
― Jami Attenberg, All This Could Be Yours: A Searing Southern Family Drama About Confronting Bad Men and Toxic Legacy

“Once she was deeply fascinated with her parents. She had craved knowledge about them. As a child she fiddled with locked doors and drawers, got down on her knees and dug through closets, lingered outside her father’s study during business calls until her mother shooed her off. Fifteen years ago, she had at last recognized the pointlessness in trying to uncover the truth from a man who had never actually been convicted of anything, and a woman who had sealed shut her emotions decades ago.”
― Jami Attenberg, All This Could Be Yours: A Searing Southern Family Drama About Confronting Bad Men and Toxic Legacy

“Men never really wanted your help anyway, she thought. They wanted you to do things for them, but it would never be thought of as help so much as required service”
― Jami Attenberg, All This Could Be Yours: A Searing Southern Family Drama About Confronting Bad Men and Toxic Legacy

“Even at the end he couldn't be anything but bad. There would be no rehabilitation for him, no redemption. Some people are just bad forever.”
― Jami Attenberg, All This Could Be Yours

“I know you don't like him," said her mother. "Your father has always been a complicated man."
"I'll say," said Alex.
"But you're complicated, too. And he loves you," Barbra said. "He always thought you were smart and capable, and no one was prouder of you when you graduated from law school. He said, 'She can get me out of jail someday.”
― Jami Attenberg, All This Could Be Yours