Rachel Cohn

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

“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.”

“Let me give you some free advice. She's a runner for sure- she'll run away every time without saying a word. But here's the thing- you are not a runner. And deep down, I don't think Norah wants to run, either. She's just feels like she has to. Partly because she's a tiresome spoiled-brat smartass with no fashion sense. And partly because she's a fucking human being.”

“Ash has a huge customized Barbie collection. Aside from Horror Movie Barbie (head lopped halfway off, torn and bloody clothes), Commando Barbie (camouflage bandana, pistol-whipping Ken with toy guns stolen from Josh), there is my personal favorite, Fat Barbie (dressed in a muumuu, sporting extra body girth and a double chin, thanks to the discreet placement of Silly Putty), I think Fat Barbie is genius but Nancy flipped out when she saw her. Our mother, whose statuesque blond Minnesouda beauty makes her look like a Barbie, is a size four on her bloated days.”

“Well, well, well,” Santa said once the elf had retreated. “Come and sit on my lap, little boy.”This Santa’s beard was real, and so was his hair. He wasn’t fucking around.“I’m not really a little boy,” I pointed out.“Get on my lap, then, big boy.”I walked up to him. There wasn’t much lap under his belly. And even though he tried to disguise it, as I went up there, I swear he adjustedhis crotch.“Ho ho ho!” he chortled.I sat gingerly on his knee, like it was a subway seat with gum on it.“Have you been a good little boy this year?” he asked.I didn’t feel that I was the right person to determine my own goodness or badness, but in the interest of speeding along this encounter, I said yes.He actually wobbled with joy.“Good! Good! Then what can I bring you this Christmas?”I thought it was obvious.“A message from Lily,” I said. “That’s what I want for Christmas. But I want it right now.”“So impatient!” Santa lowered his voice and whispered in my ear. “But Santa does have a little something for you”—he shifted a little inhis seat—“right under his coat. If you want to have your present, you’ll have to rub Santa’s belly.”“What?” I asked.He gestured with his eyes down to his stomach. “Go ahead.”I looked closely and saw the faint outline of an envelope beneath his red velvet coat.“You know you want it,” he whispered.The only way I could survive this was to think of it as the dare it was.Fuck off, Lily. You can’t intimidate me.I reached right under Santa’s coat. To my horror, I found he wasn’t wearing anything underneath. It was hot, sweaty, Geshy, hairy … andhis belly was this massive obstacle, blocking me from the envelope. I had to lean over to angle my arm in order to reach it, the whole timehaving Santa laugh, “Oh ho ho, ho ho oh ho!” in my ear. I heard the elf scream, “What the hell!” and various parents start to shriek. Yes, I was feeling up Santa. And now the corner of the envelope was in my hand. He tried to jiggle it away from me, but I held tight and yanked itout, pulling some of his white belly hair with me. “OW ho ho!” he cried. I jumped o1 his lap. “Security’s here!” the elf proclaimed. The letter was in my hand, damp but intact. “He touched Santa!” a young child squealed.”

“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.”

“I kiss her and she finds the light switch and turns it off, and we're just lit in Pepsi-can colors and it's like we've finally found this other kind of conversation, this conversation in gestures and pulls and pushes and breaths and grasps and teases and glimmers and rubs and expectation.”

“I stand up from the table and wiggle my index finger at Nick. He'll never get it, but I borrow from Heathers as I leave him to follow Tris. A true friend's work is never done," I singsong.Bulimia is so '87, Heather," he answers.HOLY SHIT squared. I think I just had my first orgasm.”

“[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. ”

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

“You think fairy tales are only for girls? Here’s a hint—ask yourself who wrote them. I assure you, it wasn’t just the women. 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 their princes, but boys want their princesses just as much. And they don’t want a very long courtship. They want to know immediately.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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)”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The mind has an ear of its own and sometimes memory is the fiercest fucking DJ alive.”

“Some spray-painted graffiti on the wall asks, Is it nothing to you all who pass by? Lamentations 1:12 and I think, No, Lord, whoever the hell You are, this is not nothing to me. This counts.”

“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.”

“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... 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.”

“We always see the worst in our selves. Our most volnerable selves. We need someone to get close enough to tell us that we're wrong. Someone we trust.”

“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.”

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

“I mean, I don’t know how the world broke. And I don’t know if there’s a God who can help us fix it. But the fact that the world is broken - I absolutely believe that. Just look around us. Every minute - every single second - there are a million things you could be thinking about. A million things you could be worrying about. Our world - don’t you just feel we’re becoming more fragmented? I used to think that when I got older, the world would make so much more sense. But you know what? The older I get, the more confusing it is to me. The more complicated it is. Harder. You’d think we’d be getting better at it. But there’s just more and more chaos. The pieces - they’re everywhere. And nobody knows what to do about it. I find myself grasping, Nick. You know that feeling? That feeling when you just want the right thing to fall into the right place, not only because it’s right, but because it would mean that such a thing is still possible? I want to believe that.”

“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.”

“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.”Ely in Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List Rachel Cohn and David Levithan”

“I Wanna Hold Your Hand.’ First single. Fucking brilliant. Perhaps the most fucking 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 blow job or a million-dollar crib. No. They wanna hold your hand. They have a feeling that they can’t hide.”

“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. ”

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