Rachel cohn quotes

So much is happening and yet nothing at all.

We believe in the wrong things. That's what frustrates me the most. Not the lack of belief, but the belief in the wrong things. You want meaning? Well, the meanings are out there. We're just so damn good at reading them wrong.

In a field, I am the absence of field. In a crowd, I am the absence of crowd. In a dream, I am the absence of dream. But I don't want to live as an absence. I move to keep things whole. Because sometimes I feel drunk on positivity. Sometimes I feel amazement at the tangle of words and lives, and I want to be a part of that tangle.

I've given him more mixed signals than a dyslexic Morse code operator.

You know the reason The Beatles made it so big?...'I Wanna Hold Your Hand.' First single....brilliant. Perhaps the most...brilliant song ever written. Because they nailed it. That's what everyone wants. Not 24/7 hot wet sex. Not a marriage that lasts a hundred years. Not a Porsche...or a million-dollar crib. No. They wanna hold your hand. They have such a feeling that they can't hide. Every single successful song of the past fifty years can be traced back to 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand.' And every single successful love story has those unbearable and unbearably exciting moments of hand-holding.

I figured being a bed salesman was a job of biblically bad paradox. I mean, here he was, forced to stand for eight or nine hours a day, and the whole time he’s surrounded by beds. And not only that, he’s surrounded by shoppers who see the beds and can’t help but think, Man, I’d love to lie down on that bed for a second. So not only does he have to stop himself from lying down, but he has to stop everyone else from doing it, too. I knew if I were him, I would be desperate for human company.

I thought about the bigger picture of my life, and about the people—and particularly the guys—I would encounter during my lifetime. How would I ever know when that moment was right, when expectation met anticipation and formed … connection?

No one would want to read a book in which I explain the science of cloning because it would be very dull and it would also make no sense.

There’s no such thing as ready,” she says. “There’s only willing.

I don't see why ogling same-sex kissing should be the exclusive domain of frat boys whacking off to lesbian action, that's so sexist. Feminism should be all inclusive- it should be about sexual liberation, equal pay for equal work, and the fundamental girl right of boy2boy appreciation.

It's a total lie to say there's only one person you're going to be with for the rest of your life. If you're lucky - and if you try really hard - there will always be more than one.

The desert adapts. The people adapt. Live. Die. Struggle. Suffer. Create. The people in the real world beyond Demesne's ring are not all manufactured perfection. They deal.

It broke the spell. It's not that I stopped being happy. I was still inexplicably, utterly happy. But suddenly the happiness had implications.

Somewhere between a friend and acquaintance—a frequaintance, as it were.

He's not my step brother technically, so I think it's okay that I kissed him once.

We all just took the bookstore at its word, because if you couldn't trust a bookstore, what could you trust?

Prayer or not, I want to believe that, despite all evidence to the contrary, it is possible for anyone to find that one special person. That person to spend Christmas with or grow old with or just to take a nice silly walk in Central Park with. Somebody who wouldn't judge another for the prepositions they dangle, or their run-on sentences, and who in turn wouldn't be judged for the snobbery of their language etymology inclinations.

[S]he leans into this guy and rocks her head like I’m making this music for her, when if I could, I would take it all away and give her as much silence as she’s given me pain.

You should never wish for wishful thinking.

There is no such thing as a soulmate...and who would want there to be? I don't want half of a shared soul. I want my own damn soul.

She doesn't want the boy causing the distinction between "love" and "in love

Therefore. Ergo. Erg. Argh. Ugh.

I feel like you may be a special and kind person. And I would like to make it my business to know special and kind people. Especially if they are boys my age.

Better to end this dream before it becomes a nightmare.

I feel like there's so much darkness in all of my books.

If I don't shut down my brain soon, my imagination will take off so far about what could be with this guy, that nothing will ever just be.-- Norah, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

They were tricky, those demons. Could they be trusted? Of course they could be trusted. She'd created them. She owned them. They wouldn't lead her astray.

We are the ones who take this thing called music and line it up with this thing called time. We are the ticking, we are the pulsing, we are underneath every part of this moment. And by making the moment our own, we are rendering it timeless. There is no audience. There are no instruments. There are only bodies and thoughts and murmurs and looks. It's the concert rush to end all concert rushes, because this is what matters. When the heart races, this is what it's racing towards.

People come to New York to be different, but I go to Starbucks to be the same.

When in doubt, ingest carbs.

So he's worth a second shot? The more apt question, my dear, is: are you?

Do you still Kill Gerbils?

Answer all the questions that I'm too afraid to ask

I mean, I think I am basically a cool girl, but I am also a pain in the ass.

I am a classic 'Star Trek' fanatic.

From a distance, a clone's luminous eyes are meant to draw in humans and make them feel safe. Up close, the eyes appear hollow. Because of that, humans tend not to look into our eyes too closely, which I've been told is socially preferable, as eyes without souls behind them can be frightening.

I'm liking that I can throw any kind of sentence at her without worrying it's too out there.

The only use she has for the word fun is to make the word funeral.

I particularly loved the adjective bookish, which I found other people used about as often as ramrod or chum or teetotaler.

There are just lots of possibilities in the world...I need to keep my mind open for what could happen and not decide that the world is hopeless if what I want to happen doesn't happen. Because something else great might happen in between.

Wherever I went, I was on the wrong end of the stampede.

Books. I'd probably spend all my time alone and lost in books if I could. It's easier that way.

It's bullshit to think of friendship and romance as being different. They're not. They're just variations of the same love. Variations of the same desire to be close.

Perhaps it's not that I'm frigid-- it's that once I decide I like a guy, I turn into a raging idiot, unfit for public appearances.

Cinderella was such a dork. She left behind her glass slipper at the ball and then went right back to her step-monster's house. It seems to me she should have worn the glass slipper always, to make herself easier to find. I always hoped that after the prince found Cinderella and they rode away in their magnificent carriage, after a few miles she turned to him and said, "Could you drop me off down the road please? Now that I've finally escaped my life of horrific abuse, I'd like to see something of the world, you know?... I'll catch back up with you later, Prince, once I've found my own way.

Listen to me: I never married because I was too easily bored. It's an awful, self-defeating trait to have. It's much better to be too easily interested.

I love snow for the same reason I love Christmas: It brings people together while time stands still. Cozy couples lazily meandered the streets and children trudged sleds and chased snowballs. No one seemed to be in a rush to experience anything other than the glory of the day, with each other, whenever and however it happened.

There's the usual suspects in there, Green Day and The Clash and The Smiths, yeah, but there's also Ella and Frank, even Dino, some Curtis Mayfield and Minor Threat and Dusty Springfield and Belle & Sebastian, and as I flip through his musical life, getting to know his tastes, I must acknowledge that not only am I not frigid, but I also may be multi-orgasmic.

The mosh pit will reveal all the answers. The mosh pit never lies. -Norah, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

Drosophila,” I said, remembering the word. “What?” Lily asked. “Why do girls always fall for guys with the at ention span of drosophila?” “What?” “Fruit flies. Guys with the attention span of fruit flies.” “Because they’re hot?” “This,” I told her, “is not the time for being truthful.

I was horribly bookish, to the point of coming right out and saying it, which I knew was not socially acceptable.

But she's not, and I am left to wonder on my own: How does this work, the getting to know a new guy without revealing too much desperation for his undivided attention?

Dumped doesn't even begin to describe it. If you're going to use a trash metaphor, incinerated is more like it.

There was no word in the dictionary adequate to describe the sensation other than sensational.

Why do you lie" I ask her. "To block the truth." Fair enough. Naomi goes on. "Where did we get it in our heads that we need truth all the time? Sometimes lies are nice, you know? You don't have to know the truth all the time. It's too exhausting.

The complexity embedded in the different levels of meaning that go along with the words "I love you" ought to be a whole mindfuck of a video game

Wold domination is exhausting and cliche. People ought to just focus on being individual responsible citizens of the earth instead of assholes.

Things change all the time, mostly in little ways.

I don't know why I'm saying any of this, except that it's the truth." -Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

It's the great male fantasy-all it takes is one dance to know that she's the one. All it takes is the sound of her song from the tower, or a look at her sleeping face. And right away you know-this is the girl in your head, sleeping or dancing or singing in front of you. Yes, girls want princes, but boys want their princesses just as much.

One of the failures of cellular communication is that tiredness often comes across as sadness.

When I was a teenager, the number one book I was most obsessed with was 'Gone with the Wind.

I am bigger than the box I'm in.

Males are the most incomprehensible species.

The Beatles, they had it all figured out, okay? "I Want to Hold Your Hand." The first single. It's effing brilliant, right?... That's what everybody wants, Nicky. They don't want a twenty-four-hour hump sesh, they don't want to be married to you for a hundred years. They just want to hold your hand.

Can we try to be wise with each other for a very long time?

People are like that, judging you before they know you.

Well what's in your Amazonian hope chest?

I walked inside Macy’s and faced the pathetic spectacle of a department store full of shoppers, none of whom were shopping for themselves. Without the instant gratification of a self-aimed purchase, everyone walked around in the tactical stupor of the financially obligated.

What's better, I wonder - to be a toy for the humans, or to control your own destiny , even if the only way to do so is suicide?

Once upon a time, Sleeping Beauty decided to take a nap from which she would never wake up.

Everyone on this island wants something kept quiet. I want to roar

Tal told me he loved me, and told me and told me, but you don't tell someone that and then tell them they're not experienced enough in bed and should read a book or something to learn, or they should try wearing deep-red lipstick and tight skirts to look hot like their best friend once in a while. If Tal hadn't lied to me when he said he loved me, I might not be without a future right now, a sucker who was so chickenshit she allowed herself to believe a false dream from a false god. I'm not sure I ever even liked Tal, much less loved him.

That's because you're interpreting it the wrong way. I didn't mean it as a wistful, overdramatic declaration. I mean that the love I felt for him was huge and real, and, while painful, it forever changed me as a person, in the same way that being your brother reflects and changes how I evolve, and vice versa. The important people in our lives leave imprints. They may stay or go in the physical realm, but they are always there in your heart, because they helped form your heart. There's no getting over that.

It still might be a shock. To realize you are just one story walking among millions.

True Love. I’m starting to suspect the concept is pure illusion, an insipid brand name manufactured by Hallmark and Disney.” — Cupcake

I want to believe there is a somebody out there for me. I want to believe that I exist to be there for that somebody.

Usually my characters, though young, tend to be street-wise.

I am stronger than words and I am bigger than the box I'm in, and then I see her in the crowd and I fall apart -I am listening and I am listening because what I'm playing isn't something I'm thinking about, it's something I'm feeling all over.

Why should I tell you?" he asked, with no small amount of petulance. "If you tell me, I will leave you alone," I said. "And if you don't tell me, I'm going to grab the nearest ghostwritten James Patterson romance novel and I am going to follow you through this store reading it out loud until you relent." Now I could see the fright beneath the defiance.

You bookish little pervert.

I'm so into you, it's not even funny. (Naomi & Ely's No Kiss List)

I'm told there's no going back. So I'm choosing forward.

I deciced if I were ever to get into booze and women, my line would be, 'Excuse me, madam, but I would really love to bed and muss you. . . . Are you perchance free this evening?

Teenage boys cannot be trusted. Their intentions are not pure.

What I’m sorry about is not being a tipsy idiot when you found me. I’m sorry about that, obviously, but more sorry that my stupidity caused us to lose a great opportunity. I don’t imagine you would have met me and fallen crazy in love with me, but I would like to think that if you’d had a chance to meet me under different circumstances, something just as nice could have happened. We could have become friends.

There. I've said everything I wanted to say without actually having to use the words "please stay

Lou's such an old punk he was around when the Ramones were junkie hustlers first and musicians second, when punk meant something other than a mass-marketing concept designed to help the bridge-and-tunnel crowd feel cool.

The universe doesn't decide what's right or not right. You do.

The handwriting was a girl’s. I mean, you can tell. That enchanted cursive.

I've always been sort of a closet sci-fi geek.

How would I ever know when that moment was right, when expectation met anticipation and formed...connection?

She told me if I clean all the ashes out of the grate, then I’ll be able to help my sisters get ready for the bal.” “It’s Christmas, Dashiel. Can’t you give that atitude a rest?” “Merry Christmas, Dad. And thanks for the presents.” “What presents?” “I’m sorry—those were all from Mom, weren’t they?

Cinderella!" Dov cried. "Let down your hair!

Friendship is love as much as any romance. And like any love, it’s difficult and treacherous and confusing. But in the moment when your knees touch, there’s nothing else you could ever want.

So this chocolate princess. Her knight in shining armor is the Easter Bunny.

But, you see, that's the luxury of being a lout - you get to be selective about when you care and when you don't. The rest of us get stuck when your care goes shallow.

It's not the loving that hurts this girl; it's the understanding of it for what it is, that it will never be returned in the same way, that threatens to destroy her. But to unload the words - "I love you" - on an innocent party who didn't ask for it, to reach across the dark space and touch him - it's like the world she knows could end if she dared speak these words, dared make such a move.

The important people in our lives leave imprints. They may stay or go in the physical realm, but they are always there in your heart, because they helped form your heart. There's no getting over that.

I mean, like most guys, you carry around this girl in your head, who is exactly who you want her to be. The person you think you will love the most. And every girl you are with gets measured against this girl in your head.

I can be a badass DJ when I want, but I am also an insufferable music snob.

Who else would find me at just this moment? First he found me drunk, now he found me cleaning up poo from a barking pony who was about to go into attack mode.

I'm thinking I would like to dance in the rain with this person. I would like to lie next to him in the dark and watch him breathe and watch him sleep and wonder what he's dreaming about and not get an inferiority complex if the dreams aren't about me.

Bruises mapped my body from bumping into tables and tripping over curbs while walking with a book in my hand, my eyes focused on the pages instead of the live space around me.

I don’t know what boldness came over me, but the resolute heaviness of Dash’s demeanor threatened to crush my soul. My pinky finger crept over and nestled against his, for comfort. Like a magnet, his pinky finger latched onto and intertwined with mine. I like magnets a whole lot.

The reward is in the risk.

No--when the rain falls you just let it fall and you grin like a madman and you dance with it, because if you can make yourself happy in the rain then you're doing pretty alright in life. (Nick, page 156)

I've always resented Hermione, because I wanted to be her so badly and she never seemed to appreciate as much as I thought she should that she got be her. She got to live at Hogwarts and be friends with Harry and kiss Ron, which was supposed to happen to me.

Hope and belief. I'd always wanted hope, but never believed that I could have such an adventure on my own. That I could own it. And love it. But it happened.

That’s what I like about sports. No matter if everyone playing the game speaks completely different languages, on the field, or the court, wherever they are playing, the language of moves and passes and scores is all the same. Universal.

With what you were talking about before. The world being broken. Maybe it isn't that we're supposed to find the pieces and put them back together. Maybe we're the pieces." Nick says. "Maybe," Nick says, "what we're supposed to do is come together. That's how we stop the breaking.

This must be part of Mother Nature's master plan—making these boys so irresistibly cute, in such a naughty way, that the purity of their intentions becomes irrelevant.

We're better off. But I don't know if the world's better off. I don't know if the two are the same thing.

I could become a nun even if I am a non-believer. I'll learn to fake it like Nick did with me. I will minister the gospel of compassion and kindness and please, always use a condom, from famine-stricken nations to war-torn dead zones. It's possible I might become a nun who kisses other nuns.

Life is funny, baby, and that's no joke

I wanted to talk to someone. But who? It’s moments like this, when you need someone the most, that your world seems smallest.

The best is when we all go at once, like an army of interrelated popcorn zombies who laugh the same laughs and gasp the same gasps and aren’t so germ-phobic with each other that we won’t share a ginormous Coke with one straw. Family is useful like that.

Wow. I feel like in this riot of people, I have been kicked in the stomach, but by the giddy police. Forget about the need for oxygen. My mouth wants to go back to the place it just left.

Be careful what you’re doing, because no one is ever who you want them to be. And the less you really know them, the more likely you are to confuse them with the girl or boy in your head

Nick and I could become goodwill ambassadors for the city now that the porno shops on 42nd Street are gone. Must make mental note to contact mayor.

The humans create life, and senselessly cause death. For nothing.

How come princesses always have some huge flaw that can cause their downfall?

Do you want to guess what's in here?" I asked Dash. "I think I've got it figured out already. There's a new supply of red notebooks in there, and you want us to fill them in with clues about the works of, say, Nicholas Sparks." "Who?" I asked. Please, no more broody poets. I couldn't keep up. "You don't know who Nicholas Sparks is?" Dash asked. I shook my head. "Please don't ever find out," he said.

But I know the difference. Everyone else is a ghost. I exist here alone, stranded by choice. Deserted.

The reward is in the risk. You can’t stay hidden inside Grandpa’s overprotective cloak forever. You’ve seemed like you needed to grow out of that for a while. Mom and Dad going away, and the red notebook, these things just helped. Now it’s up to you to