For someone like me who’s lived in the same place her whole life – I mean, I lived three blocks from where I was born, and I met my future husband in the eighth grade – there are always family stories and legends passed down. Susan Straight Read Quote
I have not ever been able to decide how would my girls have fared if they came up in a different time? Susan Straight Read Quote
My mother and father split up when I was three and my brother was still in the womb. Susan Straight Read Quote
In ‘Love Story,’ Oliver Barrett IV comes from generations of wealth and privilege, but when he meets working-class Jennifer Cavilleri, he can’t resist. When they marry, his father disowns him, but they struggle on in love, until she’s diagnosed with cancer and they can’t afford the costly treatments. Susan Straight Read Quote
All my best memories of my brother are in vehicles, speeding, predatory or celebratory. We were just made to drive. For the last 12 years of his life, he lived as caretaker of an orange grove. There, on 18 acres, my brother collected cars and trucks and motorcycles. Susan Straight Read Quote
My brother acquired his first gun when he was very young, from a recently-fled drug dealer’s residence. Now, he lived in a rural orange-grove area, and he shot at coyotes who killed his animals and at drug runners who used the groves for transport. Sometimes he joked that he only shot what moved. Susan Straight Read Quote
I never saw a gun until I was 24. I didn’t grow up in Mayberry; I grew up in Southern California. Susan Straight Read Quote
The best thing I could say is you do have to be a really good listener. If I go to a family reunion, and there’s 400 people there, everybody comes up and tells me their stories, right? And I think that when you’re a good listener, and you can imagine how someone’s talking, dialogue is your key friend, is it not? Susan Straight Read Quote
