32 Quotes by Caitlin Flanagan

Planning a wedding is hell. Things are said. Doors are slammed. Quarrels about the most inconsequential things--yellow tablecloths or white? hors d'oeuvres set out on tables or passed around on trays?--are often pitched at such a level that it seems the combatants may never recover from them. Much of the anxiety, of course, is tribal. It is wrenching to have to open the sacred circle to admit an outsider.

In many respects a teenage girl's home is more important to her than at any time since she was a small child. She also needs emotional support and protection from the most corrosive cultural forces that seek to exploit her when she is least able to resist.

I used to teach at a private school, and the parents thought I loved their children. I did not love their children! I liked them well enough, but I was always delighted to see them go off for summer vacation.

It can be demonstrated from history that no society has ever survived after its family life deteriorated.

I miss my mother very much, and I feel closest to her when I have dinner in the oven and the children are nearby playing and I'm reading a book or doing some little project.

I miss my mother very much, and I feel closest to her when I have dinner in the oven and the children are nearby playing and I’m reading a book or doing some little project.

My father was a writer; I’ve known a lot of children of writers – daughters and sons of writers, and it can be a hard way to grow up.

To really love Joan Didion – to have been blown over by things like the smell of jasmine and the packing list she kept by her suitcase – you have to be female.

In many respects a teenage girl’s home is more important to her than at any time since she was a small child. She also needs emotional support and protection from the most corrosive cultural forces that seek to exploit her when she is least able to resist.