Notable quotes

I'm a quote junky. I'm also a book junky. Put these two characteristics together and what you wind up with is a finished book with a whole lotta dog-eared pages.

As I read a book if I stumble on a quote or excerpt that is to my liking, be it that I relate or simply find it funny and/or enlightening, I dog ear that page so that later I will remember to write it down in my book of quotes. Yes, I am a nerd. Because of my insatiable appetite for books, (which I gotta admit has been suffering since Fall Television has kicked off), all of my books come from the library, i.e. even more reason to be sure to copy that ish down. It's not chilling on my bookshelf for easy access.

Every once in a while I'll read a book that has significant dog-ear potential and I'll feel the need to share. The latest, It's My F---ing Birthday by Merrill Markoe. Funny, witty and easy to read. Pretty darn easy to relate to too if you ask me. Below is a dump of notable quotes, in my humble opinion:


"I have high hopes that this will be the year the dumb girl in my finally dies. She is long overdue for a painless, or even a painful, death. I'm so sick of listening to her try to convince me of things I know don't make any sense: that the plots of romantic movies are plausible; that men who have cheated repeatedly might suddenly decide to turn over a new leaf; that guys who are assholes might turn out to be more considerate in time. I think I have been afraid to kill her completely because I'm worried that she' the only one of us who still has a little hope. I think I'm counting on her hope and her naivety to keep me from falling into the Hole."

"But even more important, from now on I must use my intuition. I must use my ever-growing knowledge of human behavior and all the things I have learned from therapy. When I think I might get involved with someone now I will not sleep with him unless I know for a fact that he loves me. I don't want to be with anyone who is out of touch with his feelings, someone who doesn't want to make a commitment."

"No more ridiculous affairs. Thirty-six years of stupid love is certainly more than enough. No more getting sexual with people I know are totally hopeless."

"No more voluntary participation in bad sex. Identify it quickly, ignite early warning system, get away. This is the nineties for God's sake."

"The only time (these guys) are truly comfortable is when a relationship is just beginning, because then there is pursuit but no commitment. Or at the very end. The middle part--the part that would contain the relationship--makes them feel like they're being suffocated."

"I have to trust my instincts. When I have started to lecture myself in order to bypass them is when I know I need to worry."

"It's ridiculous to always assume my friends know more about what is going on than I do, just because they have read a bunch of pop psychology. I love my friends, but it may be because they are as fucked up as I am."

"Be wary of men who love too much too soon for no reason."

"No more faking orgasms to help an inept guy have better self-esteem than I am exhibiting by faking orgasms in the first place."

"Don't make a big deal out of the fact that there were no guys this year. Perhaps that's a better thing than continuing to get involved with guys who exhibit behavior from the beginning that indicates the whole thing is completely hopeless. So try to remember the above as a coping strategy when I am so crazed with horniness that I want to throw myself off a building."

"Maybe the illusion of progress is as good as progress itself. Maybe I needed to take more risks. Maybe a checkered, goofy love life full of tragedy and strife, full of hideous lows and delusional highs, was better than a long blank period jam-packed with nothing. Maybe this was a message the universe was trying to give me. It was instructing me to stop worrying about trying to get things right and just do something, anything. Be vulnerable. Don't think so much. Live."

"Of course, the sex was awesome as advertised. It was like being part of a really good chemistry experiment. Everything was a turn-on. It felt like the sexual equivalent of a big, cool, chocolate shake. Delicious, with minimal nutritional value, consequences to come later."

"But so what? I would say to myself. I always knew what I was getting into. At least I am living my life on the edge. At least I am taking risks. Isn't this a better way to live then doing nothing? On the drive home I turned the radio up really loud in the hope that it would invade my body enough to change my DNA. Maybe there was some chance that it would help me convince myself I really didn't give a flying fuck. This detachment lasted about thirty-six hours. After that a wave of obsession came in like a tsunami to replace it. And with the obsession came a lot of counterproductive reasoning. The dumb girl's imagination was very sophisticated when it came to obsessing. It was the thing she did best. 'Maybe after a while, if you hang in there, he will get hooked on you the same way you are hooked on him,' she offered, as though she was from some alternate universe where this was a possibility. 'After all, he is only human. You guys are really hot together. And you can't be that hot with someone without feelings creeping in. It's not possible. Ask anyone.'"

"A checkered, goofy love life filled with tragedy and strife is not better than a long blank period. Whoever said is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all did not mean repeatedly, exclusively, and after the age of thirty-five."

"When you have never loved at all, at least you have enough attention span left to get some reading done."

"Just because there is heat in a kiss does not mean there is anything else in that kiss besides heat. And you're a fucking idiot if you think it does."

"But Mike taught me an important lesson about how the whole feeling of falling in love can be a really false read. What you think you feel about a person can change over time. It takes quite a while to be able to see it."

"When I read her quote, 'The first time I looked in his eyes I saw something that I didn't expect to see, ' I immediately thought about how many times I had noticed that something in someone's eyes and been confused by it. It reminded me of the millions of times the dumb girl tried to convince me that every moment of chemistry with a new guy was a crescendo in a symphonic love overture. I think it took me until this year to finally realize that when you see too much in his eyes in the very beginning, you're not looking at the early stages of love, you're looking at the early stages of trouble."

"No more trying to decipher the secret code of others. From now on, take everyone at face value, period. If it seems like there is something complex that I suspect may be in code, remember that the person who is making me feel that way is being an asshole. If I can't understand what they're saying, too bad for them. I can't do all the work. My brain pathways are in exile."