Key Insights & Memorable Quotes
Below are the most popular and impactful highlights and quotes from The Women:(Showing 30 of 30)
“Thank God for girlfriends. In this crazy, chaotic, divided world that was run by men, you could count on the women.”
“The women had a story to tell, even if the world wasn't quite yet ready to hear it, and their story began with three simple words. We were there.”
“Women can be heroes.”
“We were the last believers, my generation. We trusted what our parents taught us about right and wrong, good and evil, the American myth of equality and justice and honor. I wonder if any generation will ever believe again. People will say it was the war that shattered our lives and laid bare the beautiful lie we’d been taught. And they’d be right. And wrong. There was so much more. It’s hard to see clearly when the world is angry and divided and you’re being lied to.”
“Words were creators of worlds; you had to be careful with them.”
“Maybe happy now, happy for a moment, is all we really get. Happy forever seems a shitload to ask in a world on fire.”
“In this crazy, chaotic, divided world that was run by men, you could count on the women.”
“there was never enough time with the people who mattered.”
“The old white men who run this country are scared. And people do stupid, ugly things when they’re scared.” She leaned close. “But they’re counting on their power and our fear.”
“We laugh so we don't cry.”
“That was the starting and ending point in life: love. The journey was everything in between.”
“The world changes for men, Frances. For women, it stays pretty much the same.”
“From here, the war was almost beautiful. Maybe that was a fundamental truth: War looked one way for those who saw it from a safe distance. Close up, the view was different”
“Love. A thing to be shouted from the rooftops, celebrated, not cultivated in secret and clipped into shape in the dark.”
“The women had a story to tell, even if the world wasn’t quite yet ready to hear it, and their story began with three simple words. We were there.”
“Love mattered in this ruined world, but so did honor. What was one without the other?”
“regrets were a waste of time. If only was the bend in a troubling road. She learned day by day how to navigate through life, keep going, keep moving forward.”
“Maybe that was why people built walls: to look away, to ignore anything they didn’t want to see.”
“You deserve to be loved, Frankie. In that forever kind of way. Don’t forget that.”
“At twenty-five, Frankie moved with the kind of caution that came with age; she was constantly on guard, aware that something bad could happen at any moment. She trusted neither the ground beneath her feet nor the sky above her head. Since coming home from war, she had learned how fragile she was, how easily upended her emotions could be.”
“Welcome to the Thirty-Sixth Evac Hospital, McGrath. Be the best version of yourself.”
“He was giving her that look—she knew it now—sadness wrapped in compassion, wrapped in understanding”
“Having discovered her own failings, she was less inclined to judge others.”
“She wouldn’t be surprised if those death stares would be a part of them forever now. Men staring into a world they no longer were a part of, no longer comprehended, a world where the ground beneath your feet exploded. Another kind of casualty.”
“Life was like that, she guessed; it was all wrong until suddenly it was right, and you didn’t really know how to react in either instance.”
“Apparently, when Walter Cronkite reported on the Tet carnage, he’d said—on air—“What the hell is going on? I thought we were winning the war.”
“The question was, how? How did you get through grief, how did you want to live again when you couldn’t imagine what that life could be, how you could be happy again?”
“That was what family meant. Sometimes hurts didn’t quite heal. That was life.”
“She could reach into a man’s chest and hold his heart in her hands, but she had forgotten how to make small talk.”
“But time—and friendship—had done exactly as promised: pain and grief had grown soft in her hands, almost pliable. She found she could form them into something kinder if she was deliberate in thought and action, if she lived a careful, cautious life, if she stayed away from anything that reminded her of the war, of loss, of death.”
