Elna Baker

“Impossible is Nothing,” it said. “Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”

“No sex?" He looked at me in disbelief. "Well if you can't have ze sex, what can you do?"For the sake of simplicity I took my left arm and lined it up just under my collarbones. "Nothing below here," I said. I took my right arm and lined it up to my knees. "Nothing above here.""What about your armpit?" he asked. "Can your boyfriend do anything he wants to your armpit?"I thought about it. Armpits seemed pretty harmless. "Yeah," I said optimistically. "My boyfriend can do anything he wants to my armpit.""This is good," the Frenchman said. "He can stick his penis in and out of your armpit, and if you grow hair there it is almost like vagine."Is it too late to change my answer? I wondered, pulling a cardigan over my bare shoulders and covering any hint of an invitation.”

“I know it is possible to feel this way about other people," I began, pointing to my heart, "I know that there are a lot of ways to love and that each person I date will bring out a different part of me and I will love them all differently. But I always like how I liked you the best.”

“You know what your problem is?" he continued."What?""You believe a buncha different things, you've lived in a buncha different places, and now, nobody's like you.""Thanks, Vinny. No one tells you what being unique actually means: that you'll die alone.”

“The thing with restaurant talk is you’re not supposed to take it to heart.”

“When you wish for something over and over again and it doesn't come true, something else happens; not only do you give up, but you resent your wish and you resent wishing.”

“Impossible is Nothing”

“I think crush is the perfect word to describe it, too, because it simultaneously means 'to have a brief infatuation with someone unattainable' and 'to be violently squashed.”

“When slow songs do play, people joke that you should be able to fit "the standard works" between you and your partner. The standard works is a Mormon term referring to all of the religious books we study. So when you're slow dancing, the Old Testament, New Testament, The Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price should be able to fit in the space between you and your dance partner -- or you're dancing too close.”

“While Catholics usually paint the Savior suffering, Mormon artists tend to depict Him as a rugged Idaho mountain man – the kind of Jesus you wouldn’t mind dating. In this particular picture he was healing a blonde child, because blondes were big in Jerusalen in 33 A.D. (131)”

“I think most religious people experience just as much doubt as they do faith; they just don’t admit it. (13)”

“I even tried to usher her into this century by explaining that wearing rainbows didn’t automatically mean a person was gay. The Lucky Charms leprechaun was not necessarily a homosexual. The Care Bear with the rainbow on his tummy did not have a life partner. He didn’t even have genitals. (6)”