Friends and Strangers Quotes

“Your twenties are about getting the things you want—the career, the man. Your thirties are about figuring out what to do with that stuff once you’ve got it.”
― J. Courtney Sullivan, Friends and Strangers

“The bond between parent and child was all-consuming, and yet its power was not cumulative. It had to be remade again and again throughout the course of a lifetime. A mother could do everything right early on, and still, if she failed to renegotiate the terms, all would be lost.”
― J. Courtney Sullivan, Friends and Strangers

“As you made your way through life, there were people who stuck, the ones who stayed around forever and whom you came to need as much as you needed water or air.”
― J. Courtney Sullivan, Friends and Strangers

“How many choices had she made in her life to avoid having regrets later on?”
― J. Courtney Sullivan, Friends and Strangers

“Elisabeth read it over and over again. She sent a screenshot to Nomi. They decided her sister needed an editor. If Charlotte had simply said she was sorry, without calling her own devious behavior a misunderstanding. If she hadn’t mentioned the cleanse or added that amorphous someday.”
― J. Courtney Sullivan, Friends and Strangers

“She wished more than anything to be that child again. Someone for whom all decisions were made, and love was background noise; uneventful, absolute.”
― J. Courtney Sullivan, Friends and Strangers

“As you made your way through life, there were people who stuck, the ones who stayed around forever and whom you came to need as much as you needed water or air. Others were meant to keep you company for a time. In the moment, you rarely knew which would be which.”
― J. Courtney Sullivan, Friends and Strangers

“The big secret of adulthood is that you never feel settled,” Elisabeth said. “Just unsettled in new ways. Your twenties are about getting the things you want—the career, the man. Your thirties are about figuring out what to do with that stuff once you’ve got it.”
― J. Courtney Sullivan, Friends and Strangers

“She looked at the people digging up roads and busing dishes and caring for other people's children - holding up the world - and wondered what they'd rather be doing. She was thirty-one years old, and she couldn't quite accept that some people would be encouraged to pursue their passions, while others never would.”
― J. Courtney Sullivan, Friends and Strangers

“It was her way of drawing a line between them and herself, playing the observer so she didn't have to care whether or not she fit in.”
― J. Courtney Sullivan, Friends and Strangers

“A million different ways. I think of what my mother did when I was a kid, confiding in me about my father’s affairs. Needing me to indulge her every insecurity. A child shouldn’t be so aware of her mother’s demons. A child shouldn’t know her mother has demons at all. Is that right?”
― J. Courtney Sullivan, Friends and Strangers

“I think it all comes down to power. And the individual. Women are every bit as capable of being evil and corrupt as men are. They just haven’t had as much opportunity to show it, historically speaking.”
― J. Courtney Sullivan, Friends and Strangers

“Elisabeth pictured drunk teenage girls in cutoffs swinging back and forth, shrieking as they let go. Still making the kinds of bad choices that ultimately didn't matter.”
― J. Courtney Sullivan, Friends and Strangers

“But because she had put in the time, she could now go anywhere.”
― J. Courtney Sullivan, Friends and Strangers

“High school never ended. It just took on different shapes, new casts of characters. Elisabeth had only recovered from the real thing when she went away to college and”
― J. Courtney Sullivan, Friends and Strangers

“The look on Andrew’s face matched the way Elisabeth felt. It made her want to kiss him. Maybe the definition of a happy marriage was simply not wishing you were married to anyone’s husband but your own.”
― J. Courtney Sullivan, Friends and Strangers

“Elisabeth wished she had the guts to say, Like there are still women who, when their husband is in charge of the kids, will say he’s babysitting.”
― J. Courtney Sullivan, Friends and Strangers

“but for the most part, their friendship was guilt-free. Voice mails sometimes went unanswered. A birthday present might arrive two months late, or not at all. There were no hurt feelings on either side.”
― J. Courtney Sullivan, Friends and Strangers