Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club Quotes

“People here liked to say they rooted for the underdog, but some of them got real quiet when the underdog was different from them.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

“She'd heard enough regrets in her lifetime to know that dreams don't always die because of something terrible, but more often because of something that's merely acceptable.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

“It reminded him of college life, how you could see most of someone's possessions all at once in a single room, defiantly asserting a personality.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

“Ned had no clue how any parent could live a life without regret. Like most parents, he just had to choose which regrets he could live with.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

“This place is in your blood, but not your heart. Go find a place that is.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

“the only thing worse than restaurant work was the ceaseless, unpaid childcare inflicted upon an older sister.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

“It's lonely, to no feel like other, to not experience their apparent ease or success.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

“Like I told you, you are the way you are,' Dr. Eaton said. 'There's nothing wrong with that. Everybody needs help sometimes. You just needed help with this.' She could never hear those sentences enough. It's lonely, to not feel like others, to not experience their apparent ease or success. For the first time, Mariel felt ashamed that she'd tried to hide what she viewed as a deficiency. It was the shame that was isolating, not the need for support.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

“Winter was her cathedral, and the snow-decked trees its endless pillars, and although it was quiet, it wasn't empty. The silence coaxed voices into her imagination, voices of the past and future, voices of animals and people both common and divine.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

“Ned and Mariel arrived at the stadium early, so he had time to relax amid the best artificial environment ever invented, and take in the aura. He knew people who felt that way about places like theaters and church, but to him, those settings were compromised by time and certainty. A play was never going to remove its most prominent actor halfway through act 1 due to ineffectiveness; a preacher would never crush the hopes of his flock and send them home disappointed a couple of Sundays a month. That’s why Ned loved baseball. It might break your heart, but you believed in it anyway. In a life of certainty, he cherished this elective relationship with peril.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

“You worried about disappointing your mom?” Florence looked like she was about to laugh. “Stay here and take over this place, that would do it. You want to fulfill your mom’s dream for you? Get out of here.” Across the road, over the lake, the sun was washing away in a soup of pink, yellow, orange, and violet. It was so beautiful here in the summer, when she had the time to notice it. “That’s news to me. I’ve only ever heard the opposite.” “When did she ever say that? I don’t recall it,” Florence replied, and smiled. “This place is in your blood, but not your heart. Go find a place that is.” •”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

“Florence wouldn’t have ever said it, but she loved Brenda more than most family members, and Brenda enjoyed and knew how to handle Florence, especially in public. No local business slacked off when it saw these two lurching toward the door. They were twice as scary as Yelp and their reviews spread ten times as fast.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

“Even when a brief spell of peace descended, the bitter clang of a dropped fork or the graceless blast of a soda gun tortured her concentration at viciously random intervals.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

“Yes! Yes!” Florence yelled. Julia had never seen her grandmother so riled up. “That’s him, I know it’s him. That’s Archie Eastman.” “Yeah, I think that was his name. He’d come up and visit Floyd sometimes. I suppose you never would’ve met him.” She smiled at the picture, and tears were in her eyes. “They’re together.” “Yeah. They almost look like a couple,” Ned said, and laughed. “What do you think, Florence?” Florence didn’t say a thing.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

“Grubbs didn’t enjoy dealing with creeps any more than Julia did, but she was awesome at it. Unlike Julia, Grubbs had actually become hot, but to her credit, Grubbs used her looks as cover to defend her friends and offend strangers.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

“At the end of her walk, she’d sit near the lake, until the racket of the first passing vehicles revealed the real world, with all of its dull burdens and insufficient promises.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

“The little girl started calling her sister’s name, Lainey, again and again. “That’s up to you, Mom,” Mariel said. When Lainey still didn’t appear, the girl screamed the name. What a wondrous pair of lungs this child had. She screamed, louder and louder, until it reduced her sister’s name to raw syllables, and didn’t sound like a word anymore, but a primal emotion, shredding through the breeze. “Can you take me home now?” Florence asked. As they rose from the bench, they watched the little girl wail, as her voice touched the trees, shook the red out of the paper cups, and sweetened the earth, searching everywhere for her sister. “What?” Lainey replied as she bolted out of the house. “What, what, what?” “Nothing,” the little girl said, and went back to pouring Kool-Aid. “I’m okay now.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

“I understand why you didn’t want to see me all these years,” Florence replied. Mariel stared ahead at the next stop sign. She couldn’t yet say it wasn’t her mother’s fault. “It was an accident,” she said, which was the best she could do. “No, no, long before that, you had plenty of reasons.” Florence shook her head. “I know I wasn’t a good mother. But I’m here now if you still want one.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

“I just wanted . . .” Florence began, and paused. “I just wanted to be someplace you could find me for sure, whenever you were ready.” “You could’ve gone to Floyd’s, I’d have found you there.” “Until last week, I didn’t even have any furniture there,” Florence replied, and sighed. “I thought the church was a good place. But when it was clear you weren’t coming anytime soon, everybody had to go and make a bunch of hoopla about me waiting for you. All the publicity was their idea, not mine. I didn’t want to talk to that paper or be on TV. I just wanted to see you, whenever you were ready.” Mariel wasn’t sure what to make of all this. She lingered at a stop sign for a few seconds just to process it all for a moment. She hadn’t considered for a second how Gus’s death and the ten years since might’ve affected her mother. She’d thought about how a loss like that can change everyone it touches, but simply hadn’t believed that her mother was capable of change, ever. “Thank you, Mom,” Mariel managed to say.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

“If she were lucky enough to have a second chance at being a parent, she wondered if she, too, had the strength to give someone a second chance.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

“So you’re in?” Mariel asked. “Why not. I’ll break out my old tuxedo. What are you wearing?” “I have something in mind,” she said.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

“A few days after Floyd passed away, Mariel had finally put a rainbow flag sticker on the door, far less afraid of losing business than she was of losing her heart.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

“On her walk to the supper club—her supper club—Sunday morning, it finally dawned on Mariel. This was Florence’s protest over a decision made twenty years ago. If that were the case, the only thing that Mariel could do to make her mother happy would be something she’d never even consider. Mariel heard the chatter of birds above as she unlocked the door to her restaurant, and looked forward to the pleasant day ahead.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

“It’s an injustice that she won’t remember any of this,” Florence said, meaning the vigilant love and duty that infant care demanded. “Then she’d already know how much we love her.” “Yeah, but this is what’s expected of us,” he replied. “We earn it through what’s not expected.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

“Bronzie began to bark outside. Mariel followed her host back into the living room, where they watched through the big window as Bronzie chased a passing car. “She was hit by a car once,” Brenda said. “Now, she hates them all.” “That’s a tough way to live.” “Don’t knock it.” Brenda shrugged. “It gives her purpose.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

“She got dressed again in the dark and went outside. She found herself taking a walk up the road, in the direction of the Lakeside, and when she breathed, she felt the cold lake wind on her lips.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

“As Florence watched Gustav talk with Mildred, who’d had five children by age thirty, it occurred to her how overjoyed her husband would be with such an unruly brood. To her, the compromise was having a child, but to him, the compromise was having only one. Had Florence entered the Majestic Lodge through the employees’ door that day long ago, and not the main lobby, maybe he’d have met someone who was an eager and wonderful mother. But often, that’s not the way life works. People like Gustav end up with people like Florence, and children are born with their hearts already broken, for the mother they needed and will never have.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

“It didn’t matter if Gustav was the happiest, calmest, most easygoing man on the planet—and he was pretty close—the anxiety and sadness Florence brought to their genetic potluck was so powerful, even cut with Gustav’s sweetness and light, it would doom some unlucky child to a life of profound unhappiness.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

“Even so, for such a long time, she’d never wanted a child. She lost the love of her life over it. And there was nothing wrong with her life that a child would fix. For fifteen years, Gustav had agreed with her. They traveled, ate in fancy restaurants, bought nice furniture, and enjoyed every minute of it. But about six months ago, he changed. He claimed it wasn’t because he had a mild heart attack, but a week later he woke her up in the middle of the night and told her that he needed to be a father. He wanted a family. “But we are a family,” she told him. “You don’t need kids to be a family.” He asked if she’d do it, for him, just one child, and because she said she’d think about it, he’d been wearing her down ever since. Now they were going to attempt it, in her hometown, of all places. At least she’d get to spend time with her mother; it had been a while. She hoped she’d also get to see Lois, Hazel, and Mildred. Maybe she’d get to see Al Norgaard.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

“Everyone knows that the worst invention in world history is the surprise. There’s a reason they don’t exist in the animal kingdom unless murder is involved. Florence believed that’s what surprises were—emotional assassination.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club