The Engagements
J. Courtney Sullivan
Top 10 Best Quotes
“She remembered how she had felt cleaning out her father's clothes, wanting at once to hold on to every dirty handkerchief and musty page of sheet much, and yet wishing she were anywhere else on earth, free of it all.”
“The outside pressure to be married was intense. This had surprised her a decade ago, but now she thought she understood. People wanted you to validate their choices by doing the same thing they had done.”
“When she was pregnant with Teddy, she feared that she’d give birth to a child who disliked reading. It would be like giving birth to a foreign species.”
“You want your kids to do better than you did," he said. "That's what the American Dream is all about. But it's hard when they outgrow you. It hurts like hell.”
“This was how the modern working girl behaved. She didn’t hide her femininity or apologize for it, as they did in the old days. She flaunted it and, having been given more than any woman before her, demanded even more than that.”
“She remembered how she had felt cleaning out her father's clothes, wanting at once to hold on to every dirty handkerchief and musty page of sheet music, and yet wishing she were anywhere else on earth, free of it all.”
“Her mother… told Kate that after women got out of lousy marriages, they generally had the good sense to stay away from the institution altogether. While men just kept trying to get it right because they were incapable of being alone.”
“awake. James would force himself to close his eyes. For the next few hours, he’d lie there, thrashing around, trying to get comfortable. By morning,”
“You should call your brother and congratulate him on the new job, her father might say over the phone, and it would take Kate a moment to figure out what the hell he was talking about. Brother? She didn't have a brother.”
“Through centuries and across cultures, women were intimidated and coerced into marriage through horrible means-kidnapping, physical violence, even gang rape. In eighteenth -century England, the doctrine of coverture dictated that a woman had no legal rights within a marriage, other than those afforded her by her husband. Early American laws replicated this idea, and did not change until the 1960's. Before then, most states had "head and master" laws, giving husbands the right to beat their wives and take full control of family decision making and finances, including the woman's own property.”
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Book Keywords:
grief, loss, fathers-and-daughters, death-of-a-loved-one, death
