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Famous Emma Pattee Quotes

“He loves hot dogs—obsessively loves hot dogs. He'd eat a hot dog every day for the rest of his life if he could. Isn't it funny that this is the kind of information that makes a person unique? That they love to eat a stick of meat in a round bed of bread. Absurd. When you grow up, Bean, maybe you will love trains. Or brussels sprouts. And we will all marvel over this thing that makes you you.”

“Is this life? The thing we were all seeking since those afternoons after school, when we saw Friends on TV and dreamed that one day we would be all grown up and get coffee with friends and hang out on a couch in an apartment. Sometimes it seems like your father and I have spent not just years doing this but eons. An infinite amount of time spent unloading the dishwasher and waiting in line at the grocery store.”

“Something like adrenaline starts beating its slow drum inside me. Maybe you'll know this feeling one day—there's nothing a woman hates more than walking by herself, and hearing a strange noise, or feeling the presence of an "other," that horrible sickness all over my body, ground shifting, women are so unsafe, all of us always pretending to be safe, always avoiding any reminder that our safety is upheld only as long as the person closest to us keeps deciding not to kill us.”

“Why, how, did my mother start making her birds? I don't know; I never asked. I suppose it was like growing up with a mother who goes to church on Sundays or gets her hair done every two weeks. Why? How? But the child whose mother goes to church on Sundays does not ask those questions, because to that child, it is a perfectly normal thing to do, to go sit on hard benches in a roomful of people discussing the specifics of a fairy tale (yes, I've shown my hand here, I suppose, but sooner or later you and I will have to have this discussion) and then having cookies and coffee afterward and chatting about the weather.”