Divine Secrets Of The Ya-Ya Sisterhood Quotes
"You have had too much therapy. Or not enough. God knows how to love, Kiddo. The rest of us are only good actors."
"The only relative she heard from was her baby brother, Baylor. He said, 'It’s nuclear, Sidd-o.'"
"I stood there at the mailbox and began composing a prayer—an ‘ultra-tomato,’ as Sidda used to call ultimatums."
"My love was a privilege that you abused. I have withdrawn that privilege. You are out of my heart."
"You Goddamn self-centered liar! It’s no Goddamn wonder every relationship you have falls apart."
"Mama, you bitch, she thought. You devouring, melodramatic bitch."
"I want light baggage when I decide to blow this joint."
"My mother judged people by how well they swam and whether they made her laugh or not."
"These smells are older than any thought. Mama, Teensy, Necie, and Caro, each one of them had an individual scent, to be sure."
"You just feel like you can go anywhere when you’re on a train. Like Thornton isn’t the only place anymore but just one of a whole lot of towns all over the world."
"We have got two shoe boxes of fried chicken and biscuits that Ginger made. There is a whole car just for colored people, and that’s where Ginger is."
"You should see people look at Ginger. They can’t believe a colored woman with red hair, just like everybody in Thornton."
"The sight of Mr. Hollywood smiling like that just pushes us over the edge and we start howling, the kind of laughing that makes our mothers send us outdoors."
"The next morning we strip the beds before Mother even comes out on the porch to wake us. We have been up since sunrise, when the colors of the day came alive."
"I can’t get Miss Mitchell off my mind. I asked Caro and Teensy, 'Why!? Why didn’t she come? Why in the world didn’t she show up?'"
"Riding a train is a wonderful thing. I have decided that I just want to live on a train."
"We didn’t get to sleep for long because Aunt Louise’s maid came in and woke us up to start getting ready for the ball."
"I would rather lose my eyes than my sense of smell."
"I want to lay up like that, to float unstructured, without ambition or anxiety. I want to inhabit my life like a porch."
"Daily, she listened to the news. While the war reports were bleak, the fashion magazines reported that the new uniforms of the Women’s Army Corps would add to the prestige of the foundation industry because girdles and brassieres were included in the ensemble."
"Vivi believed in war bonds and victory gardens. She believed that Nazis and Japs were evil. She believed in democracy at all costs. But what she wanted was tenderness and passion, so she did not believe Jack Whitman should go to war."
"After he announced he had enlisted, the first thing she said was, "Why are you leaving me?""
""You’re lying," she said. "I’ve never even heard you talk about flying.""
""Got to do one thing right for the old fellow, you know?""
""There’s one thing right you could do, Jack." She spoke in a near whisper. "Stay home and love me.""
""I’m sorry, Bébé," he said. "It’s already done.""
""Will you come back?" she asked. "Are you kidding?! You think I could stay away from you? Of course, I’ll come back.""
""Do you swear to me you will come back?" He reached over to touch her cheek, but she did not respond. "I promise, Vivi.""
""You are the only man in the world I would ever want to be married to," she said."
""You could do anything, Vivi Abbott," Jack said. "You could be anything. Anything you want.""
""You want them, you got them. You don’t, we won’t. Like Maman says, ‘Nowhere in the Bible does it say every Catholic woman has to have a ripopée.’ ""
""I can have as many as I want, right?" Vivi said. "Or none at all.""
""Would Tallulah stay here and boil to death?!" Teensy asked."
""Leave it to your father to lay his hands on something like that in the middle of the war," Caro said."
""Well, they should have taken us with them," Teensy said. "It’s always cooler at Spring Creek. I’m about to die from all this humidity. I wish somebody would just wring me out!""
""There’s not a Goddamn breeze in the state of Louisiana," Caro said, slumped down into the cushions of a rattan chair, her feet propped on the screen, smoking a cigarette."
""Oh, it’s marvelous; it’s thrilling; it’s Jimmy Stewart," Vivi said. "Only it means Jack has to go far away for a long time. It means he will sit suspended in the air miles above the earth in a small metal cigar while Germans try to kill him.""
""Of course, you didn’t, Pal," Caro said. "Miss Apple Blossom Time.""
""Necie, this is not a mortal sin, you know," said Teensy."
"All life, all history happens in the body. I am learning about the woman who carried me inside of hers."
"She longed to hold her mother, full-bloom flower ripped by the roots and thrown onto unfriendly soil."
"She thought about her mother’s body and about her own body, and how they were so much alike."
"The preverbal knowledge, the stories told without words, flowing like blood, like rich oxygen, into the placenta of the baby girl as she grows in dark containment."
"The exposed roots of a tree that ran across the trail, purple-black in their wetness, looked like the raised veins on an old woman’s hands."
"Each tip on every one of its tiny, feathery branches ended in a droplet of water, as if set with diamonds, like the delicate fabric of a party dress suspended in air."
"I am not a person with a body; she was her body, a body that had spent nine months inside Vivi’s body."
"Dear Vivi, Every single girl at this school is ugly. I do not mean plain, I do not mean homely. I mean ugly."
"I shouldn’t complain like this with a war going on. I don’t know why they want me so miserable."
"How could five decades have passed so quickly? How many years went by unnoticed, unembraced?"
"Remember the soul of Jack Whitman, whom we have loved."
"Amazing how that one phrase 'without a doubt' held such meaning."
"It’s the things that aren’t in that scrapbook. The little big things. Dog tags."
"I don’t suppose yall have any Goddamn cigarettes around here, do you?"
"There is no escape from our mothers. I don’t even want to escape anymore."
"I can still close my eyes and see Jack. See him running down the court with the basketball."
"Patriotism is a crock. True love is not a crock, but patriotism is, cher."
"I am a woman who loves hurricanes. They put me in a party mood."
"We are put on this earth to suffer. It is through suffering that you reach happiness, through humiliation that you attain glory."
"Holy Mother of the Redeemer, if only once I could see baby throw-up stains on your lovely blue garments."
"There was nothing to erase the stink of being alive."
"I will do my best to give thanks for gifts, strangely, beautifully, painfully wrapped."