All Adults Here Quotes

“People without children thought that having a newborn was the hardest part of parenthood, that upside down, the day is night twilight zone feedings and toothless wails. But parents knew better. Parents knew that the hardest part of parenthood was figuring out how to do the right thing in 24 hours a day, forever, and surviving all the times you failed.”
― Emma Straub, All Adults Here

“People said that everyone was born alone and everyone would die alone, but they were wrong. When someone was born, they brought so many people with them, generations of people zipped into the marrow of their tiny bones.”
― Emma Straub, All Adults Here

“This was the job of a parent: to fuck up, over and over again. This was the job of a child: to grow up anyway.”
― Emma Straub, All Adults Here

“So much of becoming an adult was distancing yourself from your childhood experiences and pretending they didn’t matter, then growing to realize they were all that mattered and composed 90 percent of your entire being.”
― Emma Straub, All Adults Here

“Parents knew that the hardest part of parenthood was figuring out how to do the right thing twenty-four hours a day, forever, and surviving all the times you failed.”
― Emma Straub, All Adults Here

“It wasn’t fair when people moved away—they took so much of you with them, without even meaning to.”
― Emma Straub, All Adults Here

“Astrid was surprised they still taught J. D. Salinger in school—he had slept with a teenager, hadn’t he? They should just be reading Toni Morrison. It seemed so easy, to cut out the creeps and sexual predators, just by cutting out all the men. Sure, you’d lose some decent people, but the net result would be so positive, who would complain?”
― Emma Straub, All Adults Here

“Maybe it was a blessing of childhood that most people couldn’t remember much before they were five—what good would it do to remember life as a savage toddler, totally divorced from societal norms? It was as if each human evolved from being a chimpanzee in a single lifetime. No one wanted to remember the jungle.”
― Emma Straub, All Adults Here

“There was no excuse, except for the excuse that perfection was impossible, and failure inevitable.”
― Emma Straub, All Adults Here

“Being an adult was like always growing new layers of skin, trying to fool yourself that the bones underneath were different too.”
― Emma Straub, All Adults Here

“People spent so much time talking about falling in love, but making friends was just as hard—if you thought about it, it was crazy: Here, meet some total strangers, tell them all your secrets, expect no hurt or humiliation to come of it.”
― Emma Straub, All Adults Here

“Sometimes a lie wasn’t a lie when it got you closer to the truth. Sometimes a lie was more like a wish, or a prayer.”
― Emma Straub, All Adults Here

“everything was easier when you were a woman over fifty.”
― Emma Straub, All Adults Here

“Everyone Porter knew would have benefited from whole-family therapy for their entire lives, but who did that? Sibling relationships were as complicated as any marriage, without the possibility of divorce.”
― Emma Straub, All Adults Here

“If Porter had some of Elliot’s workout regime, if Elliot had some of his siblings’ ease in their own bodies, if Nicky had some of Elliot’s inertia, and if Porter had some of Nicky’s charisma, then she might have one perfect child. They were all perfect, of course, in their own ways, insomuch that they were each perfectly their own tangle of positives and negatives, but together, if plucked just so, they could have made one flawless human. Astrid knew it wasn’t a fair way to think about her children, but there it was.”
― Emma Straub, All Adults Here

“Rachel didn’t know what she was having, a choice that Porter respected in other people but could never have handled herself, like being a marathon runner or going camping in the winter.”
― Emma Straub, All Adults Here

“The cruelest part of becoming middle-aged was that it came on the heels of one’s own youth, not some other, better youth, and that it was too late to start over.”
― Emma Straub, All Adults Here

“Talking to a teacher outside of school—even just in the faculty parking lot—felt like acknowledging something that everyone spent their lives pretending wasn’t true, which is that teachers were people with whole lives, not just puppets who slept in their supply closets, eating only apples and dreaming of lesson plans.”
― Emma Straub, All Adults Here

“It was after her time, which was sort of nice to realize, that her childhood was far enough away that new cartoons had been invented. Eventually, she’d be old, too, just like Elliot, and Aidan and Zachary would have to explain all the things they automatically understood, just like she took it for granted that gay people could get married, or that Google could answer any question in a split second. She looked forward to there being things that young people would have to laboriously explain, their eyeballs rolling skyward”
― Emma Straub, All Adults Here

“Wendy’s father stayed at home—truthfully, was there ever a more useless figure than a grandfather?”
― Emma Straub, All Adults Here

“It was funny, to think of a house outliving a person, but of course they usually did.”
― Emma Straub, All Adults Here

“This was the job of a child: to grow up anyway.”
― Emma Straub, All Adults Here

“Astrid wished that there was a button everyone could push that immediately showed only their good intentions—how much pain that would save. Nicky could see it, she thought. He kissed her on the cheek.”
― Emma Straub, All Adults Here

“Love didn’t cure all, not in terms of missed communication and hurt feelings during an otherwise uneventful dinner conversation. Love couldn’t change the misread tone of a text message or a quick temper.”
― Emma Straub, All Adults Here

“Maybe this was motherhood, a feeling of benevolence for all human beings.”
― Emma Straub, All Adults Here

“That was another thing Porter was going to do as a mom--she was going to ask her daughter how she was, and what she was feeling, at least once a week, if not once a day. She would wait for the answer.”
― Emma Straub, All Adults Here

“The downside of Buddhism, as Cecelia understood it, and also of years of therapy, was that no one ever seemed to think anything was their fault. Everything was always open to everyone else’s feelings, or the ultimate balance of the universe. If the point of life was to let things go, then you never had to be sorry about anything.”
― Emma Straub, All Adults Here

“She wasn’t the only one who wanted to fast-forward, she understood. Maybe everyone wanted to zoom through space in one direction or the other, and the trick was finding people who wanted to go the same way you did, to help pass the time.”
― Emma Straub, All Adults Here

“It seemed so easy, to cut out the creeps and sexual predators, just by cutting out all the men. Sure, you’d lose some decent people, but the net result would be so positive, who would complain?”
― Emma Straub, All Adults Here

“It was hard to keep a secret in a small town, but as Astrid had learned, everything was easier when you were a woman over fifty. That’s what made Astrid cry, she realized—Barbara”
― Emma Straub, All Adults Here