Are We Having Fun Yet? Quotes

“I want cheese,’ says Kate, reaching for the board and knife. ‘Hardworking vaginas need dairy.”
― Lucy Mangan, Are We Having Fun Yet?

“She was one we really did think would outlive us all, preserved for ever by gin and evil.
‘Like herpes,’ Fiona once said. ‘There’s no shifting her.”
― Lucy Mangan, Are We Having Fun Yet?

“Moles inspected and cleared for duty. Facemask applied, pores emptied. Feel like my face has lost weight.
Made massive fish pie – white sauce from jar, and children have been brainwashed over the years into thinking mashed potatoes should be lumpy, so edible – gave some to them for tea, froze remaining eight portions with sense of contentment I do not expect to feel again this side of the grave.”
― Lucy Mangan, Are We Having Fun Yet?

“I swear quietly and violently. Leaving my waffle feels like parting from a lover too soon. Our relationship has barely begun.”
― Lucy Mangan, Are We Having Fun Yet?

“EVIE: (over the sound of pillows being plumped) I’m more related to Mummy than I am to you.
RICHARD: How so?
EVIE: She gave birth to me! From her tummy! (Ruminative pause.) What does the man do to help anyway?
RICHARD: He catches the baby when it comes out, so it doesn’t get all mucky on the floor.”
― Lucy Mangan, Are We Having Fun Yet?

“My twelve-year-old boss is not missing a chance to note my every perceived professional failing (she recently graduated from business school, majoring in Entitled Bullshit, and is planning to overhaul the entire charity sector by the time she’s old enough to vote).”
― Lucy Mangan, Are We Having Fun Yet?

“So clever,’ said his grandma (before whom I was throughout my childhood required to explain any mark under a B+ while she sat – in my memory at least – on a burnished Throne of Judgement before she brought down the Staff of Maternal Disgust across my soul). ‘He already sees how pointless tests are at his age! He sees right through the teachers!”
― Lucy Mangan, Are We Having Fun Yet?

“Au for an au pair!’ Richard – who dismisses Céline’s experiences as a run of simple bad luck – cries every time, labouring as he does under the profound misapprehension that the law of diminishing returns does not apply to his jokes.”
― Lucy Mangan, Are We Having Fun Yet?

“Do you become conscious of the picture you make if you look like that I wonder, or do you make yourself look like that because you’re conscious of the picture you make? All of a sudden I’m fourteen again. I didn’t even enjoy it the first time round, and I was thin then.”
― Lucy Mangan, Are We Having Fun Yet?

“Their normal children generally play on the scrubby bit of grass in front of the playground fence, falling over each other like a mass of puppies in racing-green sweatshirts. Evie regards them with disdain, Thomas with envy and fear. He has inherited a double dose of physical ineptitude from his parents and knows he would be killed if he joined in.”
― Lucy Mangan, Are We Having Fun Yet?