The Lioness of Boston Quotes

“...art is not so much the memory of the truth (I picture here Joe, smiling). It’s the memory of what we wish those moments were.”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston

“I like flirting. But you misunderstand my intentions. You think it must only be about sex.” I shook my head. “Perhaps part is about desire, but tell me, Jack, is there anything more exciting than being understood? Did it occur to you that my ‘connections’ are more about that than a kiss or a dalliance? I see these men for all that they are.”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston

“I noticed an awkward feeling growing daily—a racing heart, an emotional seasickness I wished to express but couldn't. It was as though the city of Boston, the state of Massachusetts, the country, the globe had so much for me to see and to know and yet I knew only about drawing rooms and mirrors. I did not entirely like my reflection in them.”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston

“How lucky men are not to have to choose between being serious and fun, I'd said. Julia hadn't known what I meant. She had an ability I did not: she could simply enjoy a moment, where I found myself part in it and part studying it.”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston

“We waited a moment so as not to intrude, which was fine for Jack—men may stand and look around the room and are assumed to be thinking, perhaps measuring the room's dimensions. But women? Women stand and look foolish, as though we are lost. Or, in my view, as though we are somehow always in the wrong place.”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston

“Beautiful people can afford a touch of cruelty.”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston

“I would like people⁠—particularly women⁠—to know that sometimes we are working on a goal and are not able for many reasons to speak that goal aloud. Sometimes it is hidden even from ourselves.”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston

“Subordination of desire . . . if women are encouraged to want less, to taste less, we will accept less. And loathe ourselves for the very act of wanting.”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston

“I live on the very edge of my charm".”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston

“Perhaps this was the point of travel, keeping bits of daily life to ground us while feeling also altogether stretched at the wideness of the world.”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston

“Watercolor is a process out of control. People think it’s a weak medium, but it’s just⁠—unexpected. The paint pools in certain places, and I make it have . . . gravitas, I suppose you’d call it. I like the balance, that dance of thinking it could be ruined at any moment and then that ruin is what you wanted all along.”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston

“one day I will have El Jaleo. Ever Yours⁠—ISG”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston

“in front of that stunning painting last night, I cannot rid my head of the image of Mr. John Singer Sargent’s El Jaleo.”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston

“I like what I like,” I told him. For isn’t this the way collecting should be, finding our own sacred relics?”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston

“But the living cannot deliver what the dead have taken from us.”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston

“Hanging nasturtium,” I said when he gave it to me. Mr. Gardner nodded.”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston

“We are always ourselves. We are all born at the wrong time, Isabella. It's up to each to fashion a life out of the time period in which we're dropped.”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston

“Is the point of my life”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston

“smiles. It was easier for them not to address my outburst, not to consider what I was saying.”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston

“sad”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston

“I was in the middle of something, I wish to say to anyone who visits. I was always in the middle of something.”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston

“He went along with my efforts much the same way he handled my public comments, with a tolerance that would likely one day run out. I didn't care much about being judged, and given his choices—be bothered by his unmanageable wife and become brittle and angry in our marriage or go along with the woman he was coming to know as spirited for lack of a better word—he chose the latter.”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston

“I looked deep into her brown eyes for solace, for the quietness that made everyone admire her, want her in their drawing rooms or circles.”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston

“His steadfastness, his sure footing, drew me to him. And the smile he reserved only for me.”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston

“Like one of Lyman’s rare species, I, too, had sat stuffed and useless at the breakfast table.”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston

“What’s dangerous is keeping animals in tight quarters. What the men in charge need to do is build a larger space for these beauties.” He gestured to the lions but also to me. “Don’t such elegant and cunning creatures deserve a bit of freedom?”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston

“I fought the urge to apologize. Why did women continually do so, as though we’d been conditioned from birth to apologize for our very presence?”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston

“Oh, if only one knew those people in one’s life who help to nudge us onward, those who help us to find the courage to be ourselves.”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston

“travel cracks open the globe, shows us people and forests we would never otherwise experience, but ultimately it must also hold a mirror.”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston

“Don't spoil a good story by telling the truth.”
― Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston