Laurie Frankel said this quote

Part of dedicating your life to studying literature is realizing that storytelling is more than just make-believe and that make-believe is far more important that we all pretend -- make believe -- it is. One way or another books tell the stories of their readers. But telling our lives is not the same as shaping them, whittling them away. Suddenly Jill had lost control. Her books had taken over and were in charge.

~ Laurie Frankel

Feminist narrative theory notes that for most of literary history there's been an imbalance between men's and women's stories. Male characters go out into a world of infinite possibilities. Female characters either get married or die. This makes enlightened female readers such as ourselves pissed off. But however much we deconstruct the narrative, however vigilantly we plow and apply the theory and read with our skeptical, over-educated eyes, still some lessons are hard to fully internalize, and the dream of happily-ever-after love, in real life and in literature, dies hardest of all.

~ Laurie Frankel

Poems are surmountable. They have rhymes and rhythms to help you make meaning. They're short enough. . . to read and reread until you've made some sense of them. Short stories are a different ballgame. You read them and understand the words completely. You know what happens in each sentence. You follow the dialogue and action. at the end, you know exactly what's happened. And also you have no idea.

~ Laurie Frankel

Who people think they are and what people think they want is not really who they are or what they want.

~ Laurie Frankel