The Lions of Fifth Avenue Quotes

“Leave it to a librarian to point out the alliteration in my life’s tragedies.”
― Fiona Davis, The Lions of Fifth Avenue

“After the first experience of the death of someone you love, each later one is exponentially more painful, because you know how hard it will be to recover from the loss.”
― Fiona Davis, The Lions of Fifth Avenue

“History is made by people in power making decisions, and their notes and writings reveal the decision-making process.”
― Fiona Davis, The Lions of Fifth Avenue

“It’s time to expand our view of the household, and throw off the shackles of gender oppression. I can work, I can have a child, and I can love whomever I like. Just as you can.”
― Fiona Davis, The Lions of Fifth Avenue

“Somehow, she’d always believed that if she just loved everyone enough, all would be well, that love would be the snowfall that blanketed the crevasses and jagged edges of their world, smoothing them out into a gentle field of white. Maybe she was wrong.”
― Fiona Davis, The Lions of Fifth Avenue

“Then again, what child cares about their parent’s life before they were born? It’s not until it’s too late that the resonance of the earlier times, and how they echo through the next generation, are deemed valuable.”
― Fiona Davis, The Lions of Fifth Avenue

“To live in a building that spilled over with books and knowledge, with its shelves of maps and newspapers from around the world, yet to feel so utterly stifled, was torture.”
― Fiona Davis, The Lions of Fifth Avenue

“feel like with every year, my brain is a sponge that soaks up painful experiences like water,”
― Fiona Davis, The Lions of Fifth Avenue

“While she understood his shock, she couldn’t help but observe that—once again—she was being dictated to, being told what she could do and where she could go. His fury made him ugly. She sat in one of the chairs and waited for his face to soften. They’d been together for so long, she’d forgotten to see him as a man, as a partner. Instead, he’d become someone else to have to take care of, another shirt to wash, another meal to cook.”
― Fiona Davis, The Lions of Fifth Avenue

“After the first experience of the death of someone you love, each later one is exponentially more painful, because you know how hard it will be to recover from”
― Fiona Davis, The Lions of Fifth Avenue

“The loss of the community of women stung hardest, as she had no similar role models in her life.”
― Fiona Davis, The Lions of Fifth Avenue

“I’ll be sure to tell Dr. Hooper that you impressed us all.” “Lovely to see you, Claude and Sadie. Please, do take a seat.”
― Fiona Davis, The Lions of Fifth Avenue

“Whitman.”
― Fiona Davis, The Lions of Fifth Avenue

“If the shelves were laid end to end, they would measure over eighty miles,” she”
― Fiona Davis, The Lions of Fifth Avenue

“the statue over the decades, before pinpointing 1920 as the year it had weathered enough to turn completely green.”
― Fiona Davis, The Lions of Fifth Avenue

“How much horse manure was dumped on the streets in 1880? Sadie scoured the Department of Sanitation’s books from that year and found the answer: approximately one hundred thousand tons.”
― Fiona Davis, The Lions of Fifth Avenue

“only fill traditional roles? Do you think it’s possible to “have it all”? The New York Public Library is very important to both Laura and Sadie. Is the library important to you? What role do you think your local library plays in your community? How does Sadie’s character challenge stereotypes about librarians? Before reading this book, did you know the different roles they play in serving the public? How did going to the Heterodoxy Club change Laura? Do you”
― Fiona Davis, The Lions of Fifth Avenue

“Inspiration, once again, came from the day’s speaker, a woman named Inez Haynes Gillmore, who read from a series of articles she’d published in Harper’s Bazaar, titled “Confessions of an Alien.” “‘It seems to me,’” began Inez, “‘I hang in a void midway between two spheres—the man’s sphere and the woman’s sphere. The duties and pleasure of the average woman bore and irritate. The duties and pleasures of the average man interest and allure. I soon found that it was a feeling which I shared with the majority of my kind. I have never met a man who at any time wanted to be a woman. I have met few women who have not at some time or other wanted to be men.”
― Fiona Davis, The Lions of Fifth Avenue

“Stanford and heading to the East Coast with a friend.”
― Fiona Davis, The Lions of Fifth Avenue

“Mom is still a force of nature,” said Sadie. “Even lying in bed, she’s busy directing traffic.”
― Fiona Davis, The Lions of Fifth Avenue