Quotes from Alison Lurie

Other wars end eventually in victory, defeat or exhaustion, but the war between men and women goes on forever.

We say something every morning when we decide how to dress.

We all want to be guilty, because guilt is power.

There is a peculiar burning odor in the room, like explosives. the kitchen fills with smoke and the hot, sweet, ashy smell of scorched cookies. The war has begun.

We can lie in the language of dress or try ot tell the truth; but unless we are naked and bald, it is impossible to be silent.

There's a rule, I think. You get what you want in life, but not your second choice too.

you can't write well with only the nice parts of your character, and only about nice things. And I don't want even to try anymore. I want to use everything, including hate and envy and lust and fear.

Though most tourists accepted the occasional comic misadventure, it was important to them that overall their vacation should be pleasant. When you spend money on a holiday you are essentially purchasing happiness: if you don't enjoy yourself you will feel defrauded.

Of course some people say it is her own fault that she's alone: that she is impossibly romantic, asks too much (or too little) of men, is unreasonably jealous, egotistical/a doormat; sexually insatiable/frigid; and so on—the usual things people say of any unmarried woman, as Vinnie well knows.

Brian knows the affair is wrong. He's known from the moment Wendy first undressed in his office. But with her hot, wet tongue in his ear, and her taut, pink nipples straining against his starched white shirt, and with Mick Jagger's strident voice squawking about satisfaction on the tiny transistor radio, Brian's body refuses to obey. Instead of shoving Wendy out the door, he shoves her onto the unmade bed.

In this culture, where energy and egotism are rewarded in the young and good-looking, plain aging women are supposed to be self-effacing, uncomplaining--to take up as little space and breathe as little air as possible.

As I walked by myself And talked to myself, Myself said unto me, Look to thyself, Take care of thyself, For nobody cares for thee.

In most novels it is taken for granted that people over fifty are as set in their ways as elderly apple trees, and as permanently shaped and scarred by the years they have weathered. The literary convention is that nothing major can happen to them except through subtraction.

No entiendo por qué te empeñas en seguir escribiendo —me dijo una vez que estaba especialmente deprimida —. Da la impresión de que hacerlo te causa un enorme malestar.

It is a curious thing that people only ask if you are enjoying yourself when you aren't.

As we leave the tribal culture of childhood behind, we lose contact with instinctive joy in self-expression: with the creative imagination, spontaneous emotion, and the ability to see the world as full of wonders.

blood, they would be back. Molly herself was one

That's what you think, my dear. You think a lot of men want to sleep with me. I used to think that myself." Her voice alters. "Bloody little fool that I was. Men don't want to sleep with me, they want to have slept with me.

transformed into a kind of

Vinne sighs; she has a deep distrust of marriage, which in her observation has an almost irresistable tendency to turn friends and lovers into relatives, if not into foes.

When things have gone wrong it is no consolation to hear that your friends expected it all along and could have told you so if they hadn't been so polite.

I'll tell you the truth, don't think I'm lying: I've to run backwards to keep from flying.

Sticks and stones may break my bones; But names will never hurt me When I die, then you'll cry for the names you called me.

It was lucky for Fred that he had already published two solid articles and was in the eighteenth century, where good candidates are scarce. Fred