Yaya Quotes

It’s life. You don’t figure it out. You just climb up on the beast and ride.

Friends are supposed to act like harbor boats—let you know if you’re off course. But it ain’t always possible…

life is short but it is wide. this too shall pass.

Some women pray for their daughters to marry good husbands. I pray that my girls will find girlfriends half as loyal and true as the Ya-Yas.

Smoke, drink and never think.

She used to say she could taste sleep and that it was as delicious as a BLT on fresh French bread.

I have been to the edge and lived to tell the tale..

But who has time to write memoirs? I’m still living my memoirs.

What does my smile look like now? Vivi wondered. Can you reclaim that free-girl smile, or is it like virginity- once you loose it, that's it?

You know how some people, when they're together, they somehow make you feel more hopeful? Make you feel like the world is not the insane place it really is?

I want to lay up like that, to float unstructured, without ambition or anxiety. I want to inhabit my life like a porch.

There is the truth of history, and there is the truth of what a person remembers.

But all she wanted to do was lie in bed, eat Kraft macaroni and cheese, and hide from the alligators.

I try to believe," she said, "that God doesn't give you more than one little piece of the story at once. You know, the story of your life. Otherwise your heart would crack wider than you could handle. He only cracks it enough so you can still walk, like someone wearing a cast. But you've still got a crack running up your side, big enough for a sapling to grow out of. Only no one sees it. Nobody sees it. Everybody thinks you're one whole piece, and so they treat you maybe not so gentle as they could see that crack.

Because I miss them. Because I need them. Because I love them.

At the beauty of what she had stumbled onto, at the fear that something terrible would happen because she was not vigilant enough. She cried at the fear of something so good that she would not be brave enough to bear it.

... a full moon shimmered over central Louisiana. This was no rinky-dink moon. This was a moon you had to curtsy to. A big, heavy, mysterious, beautiful, bossy moon. The kind you want to serve things to on a silver platter.

What they don't know is that I went over the edge years ago, and lived to tell the tale.

Of all the secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood the most divine was humor.

…the love we most cherish will, of necessity, bring us pain. Because that love is like the setting of a body with broken bones. But I want to stage the setting. I want to direct all scenes.

They wanted to rock, they wanted to roll, they wanted to feel the peculiarly human feeling of having a perfect night in an imperfect world.

She longed for porch friendship, for the sticky, hot sensation of familiar female legs thrown over hers in companionship. She pined for the girliness of it all, the unplanned, improvisational laziness. She wanted to soak the words 'time management' out of her lexicon. She wanted to hand over, to yield, to let herself float down the unchartered beautiful fertile musky swamp of life, where creativity and eroticism and deep intelligence dwell.

This is a cardinal Ya-Ya rule: you must meet each person's eyes while clinking glasses in a toast. Otherwise, the ritual has no meaning, it's just pure show. And that is something the Ya-Yas are not.

Many people are more like the earth than we know. Maybe they have fault lines that sooner or later are going to split open under pressure.

These are all I have. I do not have the wide, bright beacon of some solid old lighthouse, guiding ships safely home, past the jaggedrocks. I only have these little glimmers that flicker and then go out.

Life is short, but it is wide. Genevieve Whitman taught me that.

But the not-very-highbrow truth of the matter was that the reading was how I got my ya-yas out. For the sake of my bookish reputation I upgraded to Tolstoy and Steinbeck before I understood them, but my dark secret was that really, I preferred the junk. The Dragonriders of Pern, Flowers in the Attic, The Clan of the Cave Bear. This stuff was like my stash of Playboys under the mattress.

Shep claimed eating cake like that so early in the morning was a 'whore's breakfast.' The rest of them didn't care. They were happy little whores who didn't worry about saving a morsel.

I live in an ocean of smell…

The moon loved them. Not because they were beautiful, or because they were perfect, or because they were perky, but because they were her darling daughters.

Say there is no truth. Say there are only scraps that we feebly try to sew togethr.

I wish I knew then what I know now - and still had those thighs!

His tall, lanky body had the wrinkles of sleep, and he smelled like cotton and dreams.

A scent that disturbs me and delights me. It smells like ripe pears, vetiver, a bit of violet and something else- something spicy almost biting and exotic.

Do you think any of us know how to love?! Do you think anybody would ever do anything if they waited until they knew how to love?! Do you think that babies would ever get made or meals cooked or crops planed or books written or what God-damn-have-you? Do you think people would even get out of bed in the morning if they waited until they knew how to love? You have had too much therapy. Or not enough. God knows how to love, kiddo. The rest of us are only good actors. Forget love. Try good manners.

The very air they breathed was almost a juice.

True love is not a crock, but patriotism is.

... Bu yol bitmez herhalde. İnsan ölür, o yolun bir yerinde kalır. Ama bu yolda ilerleme gücünü veren şey, bir şeyler yapmak dediği şeyi yapma gücünü veren şey, inançsa, Andronikos daha yolun başında yaya kalmıyor mu? İnanç değil de başka bir şey olabilir mi bu gücü veren?...

The notes danced through the June air; Vivi could feel them dust her hair and shoulders. She could feel the notes enter her and settle deep into her bones.

It was the kind... of Southern women... who believe... that it is impossible to arrive in a new place without a pair of shoes to match every possible change of clothes.

Glorious theater. It creates family for all kinds of orphans.

She leaned down and smelled the skin at Connor's shoulders right at the spots where, as Martha Graham might have said, his own wings might have been attached.

It's life, Sidda. You just climb on the beast and ride.

It kills me to think I didn't spot her headed for the rocks. Friends are supposed to act like harbor boats-let you know if you're off course.

I can't help it, I'm an addict.' 'Don't corrupt the word 'addict,' Goddamnit,' Caro said. 'I'm fed up with everybody claiming they're addicted. You're just a ponderer, Sidda, that's all.

The point is not knowing another person, or learning to love another person. The point is simply this: how tender can we bear to be?

In the crook of the crescent moon sits the Holy Lady, with strong muscles and a merciful heart. She kicks her her splendid legs like the moon is her swing and the sky, her front porch. She waves down at Sidda like she has just spotted an old buddy.

Sometimes lost treasures can be reclaimed.

The soft aroma of old worn cotton from a linen chest, the lingering smell of tobacco on an angora sweater; Jergen's hand lotion, sauteed green peppers and onions; the sweet, nutty smell of peanut butter and bananas, the oaken smell of good bourbon. A combination of lily of the valley, cedar, vanilla, and somewhere, the lingering of old rose. These smells are older than any thought. Mama, Teensy, Neecie, and Caro, each one of them had an individual scent, to be sure. But this is the Gumbo of their scents. This is the Gumbo Ya-Ya. This is the internal vial of perfume I carry with me everywhere I go.

The words shot through Vivi's bones and blood and muscle, and her body relaxed, so that when her feet touched the ground they met the earth differently, as though they had found roots that reached deep down and anchored to something tender and undamaged.

As Sidda joined Vivi in staring out into the darkness of the fields, where hundreds of sunflowers grew, she thought: I will never fully know my mother, any more than I will ever know my father or Connor, or myself. I have been missing the point. The point is not knowing another person, or learning to love another person. The point is simply this: how tender can we bear to be? What good manners can we show as we welcome ourselves and others into our hearts?

Sidda sank down into the wide flannel embrace of their bodies, and she rested. For a moment she died a little death, they died it together.

But you...are my sweetest gift. The life surprise that soothed all my ills and gave me my greatest joys. I feel so blessed you are mine. —Mama Ya-Ya

Life is short, but wide.

Taking out the journal she’d packed, and intending to make some preproduction notes on The Women, Sidda began to write instead about the Ya-Yas. Her hand moved across

She walks barefoot into the humid night, moonlight on her freckled shoulders. Near a huge, live oak tree on the edge of her father's cotton fields, Sidda looks up into the sky. In the crook of the crescent moon sits the Holy Lady, with strong muscles and a merciful heart. She kicks her splendid legs like the moon is her swing and the sky, her front porch. She waves down at Sidda like she has just spotted an old buddy. Sidda stands in the moonlight and lets the Blessed Mother love every hair on her six-year-old head. Tenderness flows down from the moon and up from the earth. For one fleeting, luminous moment, Sidda Walker knows there has never been a time when she has not been loved.

How many years went by unnoticed, unembraced?

She's smiling that smile they smile before they grow bosoms.

The alligators can get you at any age, Buddy. But the worst thing you can do is freeze.

Uncountable the number off breaths I've taken for granted in my life.

Connor: [about Sidda and Connor's wedding] Vivi, it's taken years to nail down a date. She's always said, "What's the rush, when things are so good?" I don't know what the hell she's so afraid of - it's like she's always waiting for the bottom to drop out. Vivi: You know why she thinks that, don't ya, honey? Because it did. It always did.

pretty is as pretty does

Don’t think this means I’m giving you all my secrets. There is more to me than you will ever know.

Those eagles, like angels, don't distinguish between work and play. To them, it is all one and the same.

Tears will do you no good.

Once the scent caught me on the street in Greenwich Village. I stopped in my tracks and looked around. Where was it coming from? A shop? The trees? A passerby? I could not tell. I only knew the smell made me cry. I stood on the sidewalk in Greenwich Village as people brushed by, and felt suddenly young and terribly open, as if I were waiting for something. I live in an ocean of smell, and the ocean is my mother.

Sidda was tired of being vigilant, alert, sharp. She longed for porch friendship, for the sticky, hot sensation of familiar female legs thrown over hers in companionship. She pined for the girlness of it all, the unplanned, improvisational laziness. She wanted to soak the words "time management" out of her lexicon. She wanted to hand over, to yield, to let herself float down into the uncharted beautiful fertile musky swamp of life, where creativity and eroticism and deep intelligence dwell.

After writing in her journal, Sidda felt sleepy. She let her head drop down over the table and dozed off. Vivi’s

I couldn’t wait until my own stroke was strong enough for me to follow in her wake.

Our Lady of Cheribim Chit-Chat.

Liminal moments. Those moments apart from time when you are gripped. Taken. When you are so fully absorbed in what you are doing that time ceases to exist. Those early morning birthday moments were liminal, Sidda thought. Momma knew how to embrace liminality inspite of (or maybe because of) her emotional acrobatics. Momma taught me rapture.

She saw night lights in the rooms of the babies who dreamed soft seersucker dreams, drugged happy with the heat, their pink baby bodies curled against worn out cotton, not fearing Hitler yet, their strong, tiny hearts beating in unison with the trees and the creeks and the bayou

Wade Coenen poured her a glass of brandy. 'Theater,' he said. 'Glorious theater. It creates family for all kinds of orphans.

I was stupefied. Had she once been a star and her bright burning had dimmed? Maybe because she had us? Or had Mama

all these other little ringlet-headed girls and break into a dance. Make everyone look at me, only me! But you have to stand in line. All we’re supposed to do is stand up here and

smoke, drink, never think—borrowed from Billie Holiday.

The soul needs the body.

En un tren, parece que puedas ir a cualquier parte.

Très Ya-Ya-No!

Life is short but it is wide.

and I will always have to be careful with each other. She

There is the truth of history, and there is the truth of what a person remembers. (pg. 174)

the ocean is my mother.

The happiness in her eyes made my heart hurt.

came in out of the kitchen.

Sidda and I will always have to be careful with each other.

As Vivi drove, it seemed that not only the Ya-Ya's bodies but the earth and sky were sweating. The very air they breathed was almost a juice. Moonlight spilled down into the convertible, onto the four friends' shoulders and knees and on the tops of their heads, so that their hair seemed to have little sparks shooting off it. Vivi had no idea at all where she was headed, but she knew that whatever direction she went, her friends would go with her.

the page swiftly. Sidda did not stop to correct herself, or to analyze why she was doing this. She simply glanced at the creekbank photo, sat at the cabin’s table, and wrote from the heart. Oh, how Mama and the Ya-Yas laughed! I could hear them from the water where I played with

Those porch girls had no idea they were going to sprawl on that couch until the weight of their adolescent bodies sank down into the pillows. They have no idea when they will get up off that couch. They have no plans for what will happen next. They only know their bodies touching as they try to keep cool. They only know that the coolest spot they can find is in front of that rotary fan. I want to lay up like that, to float unstructured, without ambition or anxiety. I want to inhibit my life like a porch.

I don’t care what the fire department says about fire hazards. I have lived through fire before.

Jack says your letters still sound cheery, but I know that’s just because you’re putting on a good face for him. We think you’re the one that needs cheering up, Bébé.

Sidda looked like she could not have been born from my body. This was the first time I ever felt that she was not me: that she was someone else. I didn’t like that feeling.

at that picture, you would think that no one died. You would think we were happy all the time: my mother, my baby, and

What Sidda did not know was how much more singing there was when Vivi was growing up. That's the kind of thing the history books don't tell you. How people sang outdoors all the time.

From her perch on the crescent of the harvest moon, the Holy Lady looked down and smiled at her imperfect children. The angels attending her that night felt little twinges of longing to be in human form, if for only a few minutes. They wanted to rock, they wanted to roll, they wanted to feel the peculiarly human feeling of having a perfect night in an imperfect world.

Don’t call me stupid,” Yaya says, taking a half step toward me. The shine of tears in her eyes is gone: she’s fully angry now and it shows. But I’m angry too. Is this how humans got ourselves into this mess? By believing that we have as much right to this planet as the Faloii? Do we think we own the galaxy? I’m surprised they haven’t already thrown us back out into the stars.

he doesn’t believe in using surgically altered . . . uh . . .” My face heated up. Murphy was probably my best friend, but she was still a girl, and a gentleman just doesn’t say some words in front of a lady. I held the phone with my shoulder and made a cupping motion in front of my chest with both hands. “You know.” “Boobs?” Murphy said brightly. “Jugs? Hooters? Ya-yas?” “I guess.” She continued as if I hadn’t said anything. “Melons? Torpedoes? Tits? Gazongas? Knockers? Ta-tas?” “Hell’s bells, Murph!

Well, it’s finally happening. Vivi Abbott Walker has gone over the edge. What they don’t know is that I went over the edge years ago, and lived to tell the tale. Although not to many. Vivi ran

Secret codes and lore and lingo stretching back into that fluid time before air conditioning dried up the rich, heavy humidity that used to hang over the porches of Louisiana, drenching cotton blouses, beads of sweat tickling the skin, slowing people down so the world entered them in an unhurried way. A thick stew of life that seeped into the very blood of people, so eccentric, languid thoughts simmered inside. Thoughts that would not come again after porches were enclosed, after the climate was controlled, after all windows were shut tight, and the sounds of the neighborhood were drowned out by the noise of the television set.

sparklers out in front of her. Staring at them, she thought: These are all I have. I do not have the wide, bright beacon of some solid old lighthouse, guiding ships safely home, past the jagged rocks. I only have these little glimmers that flicker and then go out. Let me see my daughter like my mother could never see me. Let her see me, too.