The Wednesday Sisters Quotes
"It suits us, to leave our meeting time up to the tilt of the earth, the track of the world around the sun."
"We met at the swings at Pardee Park on Wednesday mornings when our children were young."
"It wasn’t my park yet, just a park in a neighborhood where Danny and I might live."
"No, we are not of the white-glove generation, not really."
"I don’t as a rule gossip about people I’ve never met with other people I’ve never met."
"That was the first Wednesday. September 6, 1967."
"I watched the local news, too, though that was more about following the Cubs; they’d just lost to the Dodgers."
"I’d already settled into the life I’d been raised to settle into: dependable daughter, good wife, attentive mother."
"But early that morning, Bobby Kennedy had been shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, and the whole country was waiting with the same held breath, and nobody was a stranger, no one wanted to be alone."
"How could you live in a house with such wonderful pink shutters and fail to be happy?"
"‘The spouse who handles the money has the power?’ That’s definitely me."
"I can’t imagine, then, leaving my friends back home, the girls who’d shared sleepless slumber-party nights and double dates with me."
"That’s my baby, Danny said. Silicon-gate MOS."
"I watched in color—that, at least, was nice—and wondering which contestant Linda and Kath and all the other Stanford doctors’ wives were rooting for."
"But we already talk about books! Wouldn’t you like to try writing one?"
"I used to think it would be neat to be a writer, too, a poet or a novelist."
"I was sitting there watching Maggie on the slide, about to call to her to clear away from the bottom when she did it on her own."
"I swear, she’ll be drinking bourbon straight out of the bottle before she’s eighteen."
"God gives us gifts and helps us see fit how to use them."
"But it isn’t a first draft... It’s a fourth or a fifth or a sixth draft, I don’t even know anymore."
"Those nuns ought to have more sense than to meddle in people’s lives."
"Sometimes you have to stand up for your own dignity."
"If I don’t believe in my own work, how can I expect anyone else to?"
"No point in losing sleep over something that is almost certainly nothing."
"I have a lot of index cards to add to our collection."
"It’s like he thinks I’m already dead, like he’s already drawing away from me."
"I felt like I’d been given a new start—or not given, but found."
"It was comforting even though it wasn’t real, to have one morning every week when I could seem like a mom with a living child."
"I couldn’t bear to let them put me to sleep knowing when I wake up..."
"It’s the first time in history, that man has his feet down on something other than this earth or what was made on this earth."
"That’s the order in which we’re going to be published."
"You can’t make anyone’s dream come true but your own, Brett."
"I can bear anything but the thought of Jamie and Julie and J.J. having to endure that kind of loneliness."
"But the children were not the least bit nervous."
"You would too, Frankie. You’re a smart girl."
"But the horseshoe opening down lets the luck run out?"
"And while Brett was considering that—had she decided against being an astronaut?"
"How is it that it’s most important to us when we’re least entitled to it?"
"You can’t tell me you don’t know cheese grits."
"It wasn’t so much that our consciousness was raised in any abstract way as that Kath, after a brief and unsuccessful stint trying to get wallpaper-hanging gigs to make a little money, was trying to get a real job."
"A park in her honor. A college. A library. A book."
"We began to see what it was like for women who had to work, and it cast events in a little different light."
"The University of Louisville Marching Band struck up 'My Old Kentucky Home,' and Kath teared up as she sang along."
"She said yes—just that one word, yes—and he said, 'Okay, then,' and walked out the door."
"‘A poem is never finished, only abandoned.’ We were all beginning to see that 'done' was a relative thing."
"We couldn’t imagine they would ever find themselves childless, or with lumps in their breasts, or with scars or fears they might need gloves to protect against."
"But what about clothes and toys, medicines and trips to the zoo?"
"‘None shall be weary nor stumble...’ I choked up for a minute, too embarrassed to read on."
"We learned that Danny was going to Canada that fall, too. His company was looking precarious—they had rushed to release the 1103, a breakthrough MOS memory product with four times the capacity of the original 1101, but as Danny’s boss said privately, 'Sometimes the thing just doesn’t remember.'"
"‘None shall slumber nor sleep,’ I read on, cutting a glance toward Father Pat, who was known to doze off on occasion."
"She said, 'It’s the drug,' and I am certainly not going to take a chance that it’s not."
"As I sat at the picnic table in the moon shadow of the dilapidated mansion, watching for the sun to rise, I thought of Kath."
"‘Jesus, Kath,’ he said. ‘You still have the warmest pussy I’ve ever had.’"
"I thought, 'This must be something like what it’s like to tell your husband you’ve been unfaithful.'"
"‘Virgin, but still she gets the child,’ Ally said. ‘The Son of God, no less.’"
"‘That leaves Sundays at sunrise,’ Linda said with a sigh, not really meaning it."
"The person she needs to replace is getting married in the spring. I think she’s accepting résumés, although she won’t interview until after the New Year."
"Mr. Illinois, in shredded orange monkey shorts, hails from Chicago, where he graduated valedictorian at Northwestern University at the age of nineteen."
"Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you."
"No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted."
"You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream."
"Friends. Writing friends. The Wednesday Sisters Writing Society, we like to call ourselves. But we’re more than that, too. So much more than that."
"We started out writing together. On a picnic table in the park one Wednesday morning."
"Now we write at home, though, so we can spend our time together critiquing each other’s work."
"If you could make Johnny laugh like that, then you knew half the households in America were laughing, too."
"She was telling him about me getting my novel published then, and about the coffin, about Linda dragging us to the funeral home and making us lie down in that coffin and imagine what we would think of our lives if we were dying."
"She’s the lovely blonde in the third row who liked your monologue when no one else did."
"Let’s just say that monologue wouldn’t have made it beyond the picnic table."
"Standing there on the Carson show, the most watched talk show on television, wearing a wig that hadn’t looked great to start with and was now slightly askew."
"Lordy, Lordy, life sure doesn’t give us all the practice we need."
"You never know when a girl might be fired, and anyway, she’s fixin’ to leave publishing to write her own novel any day."
"Sweet Jesus, my mother, watching from her couch at home, reportedly said."
"The Wednesday Sisters? As you can imagine, there isn’t much that could get more attention than five bald women appearing together on The Tonight Show."