Emma Cline

29 quotes

Novelist · United States Of America · Female

Emma Cline is an American writer and novelist, originally from California. She published her first novel, The Girls, in 2016, to positive reviews. The book was shortlisted for the John Leonard Award from the National Book Critics Circle and the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize. Her stories have been published in Tin House, Granta and The Paris Revie

All Womanhood (22)coming of age (22)Life (19)feminism (19)Growing Up (16)Girls (16)thriller (16)strength (16)Love (4)Relationships (3)Lust (3)sexual attraction (3)The Girls (1)Reading (1)Be yourself (1)

From “The Girls”

“We licked batteries to feel a metallic jolt on the tongue, rumored to be one-eighteenth of an orgasm.”

Tagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism

From “The Girls: A Novel”

“There would be no heroics, I understood. Just the dull terror, the physical pain that would have to be suffered through”

Tagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism

“The intensity of his attention seemed exposing, and I laughed a little. I was just starting to learn how to be looked at. I took a deep drink. The glass was full of vodka, cloudy with the barest slip of orange juice.”

Tagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism

“I looked up because of the laughter, and kept looking because of the girls. I noticed their hair first, long and uncombed. Then their jewelry catching the sun.”

Tagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism

“These long-haired girls seemed to glide above all that was happening around them, tragic and separate. Like royalty in exile.”

Tagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism

“These long-haired girls seemed to glide above all that was happening around them, tragic and separate. Like royalty in exile.”

Tagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism

“the gaudy, prickling tease that was almost the same thing as beauty.”

Tagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism

“The hatred that vibrated beneath the surface of my girl's face-- I think Suzanne recognized it. Of course my hand would anticipate the weight of a knife. The particular give of a human body. There was so much to destroy.”

Tagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism

“I dressed to provoke love, tugging my neckline lower, settling a wistful stare on my face whenever I went out in public that implied many deep and promising thoughts, should anybody happen to glance over.”

Tagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism

“I knew just being a girl in the world handicapped your ability to believe yourself. Feelings seemed completely unreliable, like faulty gibberish scraped from a Ouija board.”

Tagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism

“So much of desire, at that age, was a willful act. Trying so hard to slur the rough, disappointing edges of boys into the shape of someone we could love.”

Tagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism

“Adults always teased me about having boyfriends, but there was an age where it was no longer a joke, the idea that boys might actually want you.”

Tagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism

“That was part of being a girl--you were resigned to whatever feedback you'd get. If you got mad, you were crazy, and if you didn't react, you were a bitch. The only thing you could do was smile from the corner they'd backed you into. Implicate yourself in the joke even if the joke was always on you.”

Tagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism

“That was our mistake, I think. One of many mistakes. To believe that boys were acting with a logic that we could someday understand. To believe that their actions had any meaning beyond thoughtless impulse.”

Tagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism

“Poor Sasha. Poor girls. The world fattens them on the promise of love. How badly they need it, and how little most of them will ever get. The treacled pop songs, the dresses described in the catalogs with words like 'sunset' and 'Paris.' Then the dreams are taken away with such violent force; the…”

Tagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism

“I waited to be told what was good about me. [...] All that time I had spent readying myself, the articles that taught me life was really just a waiting room until someone noticed you- the boys had spent that time becoming themselves.”

Tagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism

From “See Me”

“I see it now, sometimes in my own face, but also in the faces of younger girls on the subway, their pinkies linked, their eyes darting and wounded. See me, they say.”

Tagged: Life, Womanhood, feminism, coming of age

“Getting people to look at you, I understood, was a way of getting things to happen.”

Tagged: Life, Womanhood, feminism, coming of age

“I squeezed lemon juice on my hair until it was crisp and sticky, and then I sat in the sun, hoping my hair would lighten to her shade of pale. I studied her face for signs of my own, noting her polyester miniskirts, the slim legs in tall boots.”

Tagged: Life, Womanhood, feminism, coming of age

Emma Cline

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