Emma McLaughlin Quotes

#1. Keeping her wild-honey-and-chamomile-soaked hair from falling into her oatmeal-and-yogurt face mask

Emma McLaughlin

#2. Valentine's Day: Rubbing singles' noses in their lack of a mate and the noses of couples in their lack of time.

Emma McLaughlin

#3. Studios will tell you that they can't turn a profit on female-driven entertainment. Which is like the Gap saying no one is buying clothes anymore. No. No one is buying your clothes.

Emma McLaughlin

#4. Before novels written by women were relegated to their own 'genre,' I was introduced to Jane Smiley by a dear professor who raised my awareness of what female authors were bringing to the table of contemporary fiction.

Emma McLaughlin

#5. We 'chicks' have munched our popcorn while romantic comedies became just comedies, and then each female protagonist got recast for Matthew McConaughey or Seth Rogan.

Emma McLaughlin

#6. I never realized how much of the pleasure of dining out is watching people, otherwise it feels like ordering in with better utensils.

Emma McLaughlin

#7. For every woman who's ever wondered about the path not taken, Fenton and Steinke mine - with tremendous humor and insight - the mixed blessing of unexpected second chances.

Emma McLaughlin

#8. As a rule, I try to steer clear of opinions pertaining to your parenting. I assume you're doing the best you can, and God bless.

Emma McLaughlin

#9. My writing partner, Nicki, and I became obsessed with a monologist who performs unscripted shows equipped with nothing more than scribbled bullet points and a glass of water. We wrote him a fan letter and found ourselves sharing lunch and eventually a friendship.

Emma McLaughlin

#10. But there is so much you can do with five children in a dark parking lot before you want to sell them.

Emma McLaughlin

#11. If I could give a shout-out to anything in the childhood world, I have to say 'Daniel Tiger.' I want to write a love letter to everyone on that staff. It is so perfectly, thoughtfully, lovingly done. And as a parent, it is the one thing out of everything that we dip in to that really helps.

Emma McLaughlin

#12. I can't listen to anything when I write, not even the TV. I do have to listen to music when I drive, though.

Emma McLaughlin

#13. Between finishing emails, loading the fridge, unloading the dishwasher, getting our son to eat his chicken nuggets and my dog to swallow her pill, it takes approximately 32 days for my husband and I to complete a discussion and 46 to wrap up a fight.

Emma McLaughlin

#14. Read at a time when everything feels intense, seminal, and like you're the first person to discover it, freshman year of college, Carol Gilligan's 'In a Different Voice' made my hair stand on end with awe.

Emma McLaughlin

#15. I've learned that hurting you feels infinitely worse than being hurt myself.

Emma McLaughlin

#16. I think just because you're a mom, it doesn't negate - if anything, you're probably more enhanced - that you're a woman trying to find your place in the world.

Emma McLaughlin

#17. He's entitled not to love me, but he's not entitled to mess with my happy place.

Emma McLaughlin

#18. Sure, equal pay, maternity leaves, and pro sports are important. But a girl can't make a free throw from the foul line if her head's not in the game.

Emma McLaughlin

#19. Why can't everything be as easy as walking into H&M and putting a week's worth of clothes on a credit card?

Emma McLaughlin

#20. If you'e going to do something, darling, then do it all the way.

Emma McLaughlin

#21. You should totally get implants," she said admiringly in the mirror. I shake my head. "I don't yet know what I'm going to do with my life, Diane. But I'm hoping being shaped like a barbell could only be a hindrance.

Emma McLaughlin

#22. Being back here - I'm suddenly confronting the enormity of that kind of commitment. And just how much you can fuck someone up if you half-ass it.

Emma McLaughlin

#23. It's funny, we started writing chick-lit when it was just becoming a crowded marketplace, and now the same thing is happening with YA. It really used to just be one shelf at the library - Nancy Drew and Judy Blume.

Emma McLaughlin

#24. To all the guys who broke our hearts - we wouldn't appreciate what we have today without you.

Emma McLaughlin

#25. if you're going to do something darling, then do it all the way

uncoordinated and enthusiastic. a lethal combination

Emma McLaughlin

#26. Screw sharks; a Transformer could be stretching up on its tippy toes and would still have a mile of cover to eat me.

Emma McLaughlin

#27. A Hallmark card with paragraphs about my beauty written by a stranger is vaguely depressing.

Emma McLaughlin

#28. I think something that really shocked me as a nanny were parents who sort of assumed the worst from the get-go. People who didn't accept the benefit of the doubt.

Emma McLaughlin

#29. We really set out in all our books to say something. Every one is an effort to bring the reader over and show them our theory as to why what we're talking about needs to be talked about.

Emma McLaughlin

#30. Rule number one: caffeine is your new best friend. Liquid optimism.

Emma McLaughlin

#31. Cameron Crowe can write dialogue and shoot it with warmth and humor like nobody else.

Emma McLaughlin

#32. The more Mommy blogs going nuclear over playground etiquette I read and birthday parties of glazed adults munching cupcakes like demoralized zombies I attend, I realize this is what my friends who conceived before me meant by, 'You just won't care.'

Emma McLaughlin