Abbi Waxman Quotes

Life tends toward chaos, sadly. I thought I had my life all planned out nicely, and then... everything changed completely. It's all very well to have a plan - its a good idea - but you have to be able to walk away from it if you need to.

Being surrounded by books was the closest she'd ever gotten to feeling like the member of a gang. The books had her back, and the nonfiction, at least, was ready to fight if necessary.

Reading isn't the only thing in the world, Nina."
"It's one of the only five perfect things in the world."
"And the other four are?"
"Cats, dogs, Honeycrisp apples and coffee.

Solitude is independence.
-Hermann Hesse

Independence is happiness.
-Susan B. Anthony

Happiness is having your own library card.
-Sally Brown, Peanuts

For a single woman, it's all very impressive."

I took a breath. Why was there always that qualification? What if every time I commented on a man's success I said, for someone whose genitalia is dangerously housed outside of their bodies, it's a reasonable effort.

We're very romantic, aren't we?"

"Very," he said, and kissed her again. "Let's go home and be alone together.

Does everyone else feel like this?"

"Like what? Worried? Uncertain? Hopeful and cynical at the same time?"

"Yeah."

"Sure they do, baby. That's how it feels to be alive."

"It's not a good feeling."

"Well, who knows what a fish feels; it might be even worse.

Are you sure?" Liz looked worried. "I mean, I get that the universe whirls in mysterious yada yada, but wouldn't you rather travel the world?"

"No, I'd rather stay home and read.

If you're not scared, you're not brave.

Actually insane, as in mentally ill, or mad as a hatter insane?

Nina was enjoying the book; the writing was beautiful, the characters were real, the situations were bittersweet, but it was after an hour or so of reading that she came across a line that struck her so forcefully she had to close the book for a moment: "I'm lonely, " the young character Ulysses said, "and I don't know what I'm lonely for.

They love to criticize us for being on our phones, despite the fact that their generation created the phones, marketed the phones, and are profiting from the phones. They're drug pushers making fun of the junkies, which, if you think about it, is lame AF. Besides, any day now those same junkies are taking over the street corner, so they should try to be nice.

I wanted that November feeling, you know, when you suddenly remember the holidays are coming and your tummy gets all excited and it's like being seven again.

She'd read somewhere that hurricanes had winds so powerful that a piece of straw could pierce an oak, thrown so hard it became deadly beyond its weight. She was the straw, pushed by forces she only barely understood.

Was he mad at her? It was so difficult in text, and she wondered if her generation's reliance on written communication was making them better writers or simply more confused people. Body language told you so much; text on its own was subject to misinterpretation in every way possible. You'd think they'd all get very good at subtletly and vocabulary, in order to make their brief conversations more precise, but she hadn't noticed that trend.

Libraries were her favorite places, and when she traveled, she would start out at the local library, thus immediately identifying herself as a total nerd.

I don't think she let herself go Charlie, I think she just let's herself be. I can't expect Frances to do all that she's done in the last twenty years including simply gaining twenty years and not look different from the twenty-five year old I feel in love with.
If she's comfortable carrying extra weight, fair enough, if it bothers her enough she'll change it.
I don't get it when guys are like 'oh my wife isn't like she used to be'. Why would she be? Don't you expect to change as you get older? I mean I'll look at the twenty-three year old as happily as the next guy. They're pretty and their bodies are gorgeous, but what the f*** would we talk about, juice cleanses and youtube?

You had to STAY married in the brief pauses between BEING married and those pauses so often had to be rescheduled.

Beauty always fades, but it lasts so much longer if you lay a thick layer of intelligence and integrity underneath it.

It didn't matter what they weren't; it only mattered who they were.

The parents are the worst! They completely lose their minds, like academic bridezillas, focused on getting their precious mini-me into college and never for a minute thinking about what happens when the poor bastards actually get there, not to mention when they get out! God forbid they learn to fend for themselves or trust their own judgment or fail and struggle and succeed on their own terms. No! Everything has to be smoothed out and landscaped for Tiffany and Kody and Jasmine and Joshua, and if regular people get run over in the process, then that's how the cookie crumbles!

Biology is not destiny. And love is not proportionate to shared DNA.

Then don't borrow trouble from tomorrow, baby. Don't worry about how it might go wrong; just let yourself be happy.

Sometimes life is just what it is, and the best you can hope for is ice cream.

Nothing. The first thing you should always do is nothing

As a child she'd been told she had ADD, or ADHD, or some other acronym, but her school librarian had simply clicked her tongue and told her she was imaginative and creative and couldn't be expected to wait for everyone else to catch up.

Look, I cleared you a corner." Tom pointed to an area near a large window. It was dark then, of course, but in the daytime it would get plenty of light. "I was going to surprise you and put a comfy chair there so you could sit and read while I worked, and we could, you know, hang out." He tugged her closer and kissed her. "I want to be with you the way you are, the way you're going to be, and the way you end up. Every way you are is beautiful to me.

Annabel nodded at her, turning to climb into her own seat, fastening her own harness with the self-assurance of a test pilot on his fiftieth run, rather than someone with no front teeth and a Dora barrette in her hair.

... and all of them are children of parents that pressure the shit out of them to be the best and then all of a sudden you don't get into your first choice, or your second choice, or your safety, and you end up going to community college and discovering that doesn't really make any difference! It's what you do with it that matters! It's all the goddamn same!!

Nina could tell from his tone of voice that her new nephew was a morning person, that despicable breed.

Nina knew that double whammy: the emotion itself and the frustration of not being able to put it into words. She'd read somewhere that if you can't put language around an experience or feeling it's because its from your earliest childhood, before speech, when everything was inexplicable and overwhelming. She'd look at their faces, and ideas would hover on the edge of her mind just out of sight. If she tried to capture them, they'd dig themselves deeper like sand crabs, glimpsed for a second as the feelings washed over her and then were gone.

Do you know the best feeling in the world? ... It's reading a book, loving every second of it, then turning to the front and discovering that the writer wrote fourteen zillion others.

Coming out of a book was always painful.