quotes by Sloane Crosley

"It seemed more and more like something out of a children's book - the butterfly that followed the little girl all the way home to her fifth-floor walk-up. How above-the-law children's books are. Hansel and Gretel (littering, breaking and entering), Rumpelstiltskin (forced labor), Snow White (conspiracy to commit murder), Rapunzel (breach of contract)."
— Sloane Crosley

"Life starts out with everyone clapping when you take a poo and goes downhill from there. "
— Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There'd Be Cake)

"I find that anything culturally significant that happened before '93 I associate with the decade before it. In fact, Oregon Trail is one of a handful of signposts that middle school existed at all."
— Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There'd Be Cake)

"Because, ten-year-olds of the world, you shouldn't believe what your teachers tell you about the beauty and specialness and uniqueness of you. Or, believe it, little snowflake, but know it won't make a bit of difference until after puberty. It's Newton's lost law: anything that makes you unique later will get your chocolate milk stolen and your eye blackened as a kid. Won't it, Sebastian? Oh, yes, it will, my little Mandarin Chinese-learning, Poe-reciting, high-top-wearing friend. God bless you, wherever you are."
— Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There'd Be Cake)

"I called my mother immediately to inform her that she was a bad parent. "I can't believe you let us watch this. We ate dinner in front of this."

"Everyone watched Twin Peaks," was her response.

"So, if everyone jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you do it, too?"

"Don't be silly," she laughed, "of course I would, honey. There'd be no one left on the planet. It would be a very lonely place.""
— Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There'd Be Cake)

"Uniqueness is wasted on youth. Like fine wine or a solid flossing habit, you'll be grateful for it when you're older."
— Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There'd Be Cake)

"There are two kinds of people in this world: those who know where their high school yearbook is and those who do not."
— Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There'd Be Cake)

"Ladies. Large masses of girls are often prone to this salutation. I hate being mollified with this unsolicited "ladies" business. I know we're all women. I am conscious of my breasts. Do I have to be conscious of yours as well? Do men do this? Do they go, "Men: Meet for ribs in the shed after the game. Keg beer, raw eggs, and death metal only." I would imagine not."
— Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There'd Be Cake)

"I never asked my mother where babies came from but I remember clearly the day she volunteered the information....my mother called me to set the table for dinner. She sat me down in the kitchen, and under the classic caveat of 'loving each other very, very much,' explained that when a man and a woman hug tightly, the man plants a seed in the woman. The seed grows into a baby. Then she sent me to the pantry to get placemats. As a direct result of this conversation, I wouldn't hug my father for two months."
— Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There'd Be Cake)

"Sometimes we don't know what we want until we don't get it."
— Sloane Crosley

"I thought of a high school report I did on the Belgian artist Rene Magritte and a quote I once read from him, something about his favorite walk being the one he took around his own bedroom. He said that he never understood the need for people to travel because all the poetry and perspective you're ever going to get you already posses. Anais Nin had the same idea. We see the world as we are. So if it's the same brain we bring with us every time we open our eyes, what's the difference if we're looking at an island cove or a pocket watch?"
— Sloane Crosley

"I got out on the street and started crying the kind of hysterical tears made justifiable only by turning off one’s cell phone, putting it to the ear, and pretending to be told of a death in the family."
— Sloane Crosley

"I was stunned. I pulled the phone away and looked quizzically at the hole-punched speaker. Aside from the blood obligation to be my sister's maid of honor, it had never occured to me that I would get asked to be in anyone's wedding. I thought we had reached an understanding, the institution of marriage and I. Weddings are the like the triathlon of female friendship: the Shower, the Bachelorette Party, and the Main Event. It's the Iron Woman and most people never make it through. They fall off their bikes or choke on ocean water. I figured if I valued my life, I'd stay away from weddings and they'd stay away from me."
— Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There'd Be Cake)

"We all deserve to be congratulated, but sadly that would mean there's no one left to do the congratulating."
— Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There'd Be Cake)

"You feel like telling him you're not single in the way that he thinks you're single. After all, you have yourself."
— Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There'd Be Cake)

"There's a lot of pointing. A festival of pointing and at very close range to other people's eyes, given the width of the space. Also detracting from the exhibit's potential tranquility is the display cabinet of pinned specimens along one wall. I found this disturbing from the start. You don't see a whole lot of stuffed polar bears in the polar bear exhibit at the zoo, for instance. And butterflies have phenomenal vision so it's not like they can't see the mass crucifixion in their midst. I was offended on behalf of the butterflies and thus pleased with my offense. Let the empathizing begin! This volunteering thing was working already. I am a good person, hear me give!"
— Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There'd Be Cake)

"The children were overwhelmingly morbid. Not a single adult asked me where butterflies go when they die, but this question was more popular than pixie sticks with the under-four-foot set. I cursed parents for not preparing their children. When I was five, my mother and sister sat me up on the kitchen counter and explained the facts of life: the Easter Bunny didn't exist, Elijah was G-d's invisible friend, with any luck Nana would die soon, and if I ever saw a unicorn, I should kill it or catch it for cash. I turned out okay."
— Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There'd Be Cake)

"…ten year olds of the world, you shouldn’t believe what your teachers tell you about the beauty and specialness and uniqueness of you. Or, believe it, little snowflake, but know it won’t make a bit of difference until after puberty. It’s Newton’s lost law: anything that makes you unique later will get your chocolate milk stolen and your eye blackened as a kid."
— Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There'd Be Cake)

"No affair that begins with such an orchestrated overture can end on a simple note."
— Sloane Crosley

"I thought we had reached an understanding, the institution of marriage and I. Weddings are like the triathalon of female friendship: the Shower, the Bachelorette Party, and the Main Event. It's the Iron Woman and most people never make it through. They fall of their bikes and choke on ocean water. "
— Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There'd Be Cake)

"If I could just get my partner to see me how she used to - to fall in love with me all over again - everything would be okay. Every morning I would vow to work harder, and every morning something would go wrong."
— Sloane Crosley

"Such innocent confusions are like cognitive magic-eye posters. Most of the time it's impossible to go back to the jumbled mess once you've registered the picture. Sex is the exception. So natural and universal is a child's curiosity about sex and so long are we conscious of it before we do it, that our origical impressions of it leave an indelible mark."
— Sloane Crosley

"When I was 14, a camp counselor explained what "eating out" was and I vowed to never have it done to me. It seemed cannibalistic and unhygienic. I also remember that she claimed--in front of an entire cabin of girls--to have been "eaten out" by one of the maintenance men in a hot tub. Under hot water. Either something is amiss in my memory of this conversation or she found the most talented man on the planet and all hope is lost for the rest of us."
— Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There'd Be Cake)

"I was taught that candles are like house cats - domesticated versions of something wild and dangerous. There's no way to know how much of that killer instinct lurks in the darkness. I used to think the house-burning paranoia was the result of some upper-middle-class fear regarding the potential destruction of a half-million-dollar Westchester house the size of a matchbox. But then I realized the fear stemmed from something far less complex: we're not used to fire. Candles are a staple of the Judaic existence and, like many suburban residents before us, we're pretty bad Jews."
— Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There'd Be Cake)

"The good news was that "biology" turned out to be the magic password for working at the Museum of Natural History, just the way "art history" would at the Met or "trust fund" at the MoMA."
— Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There'd Be Cake)

"Suburbia is too close to the country to have anything real to do and too close to the city to admit you have nothing real to do. It’s purpose is to make it so you can identify with everything. We obviously grew up identifying with nothing."
— Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There'd Be Cake)

"'Do unto others' (along with 'a penny saved is a penny earned' and 'fresh air will do you good') was a concept that had slid off me like water off an oil-slicked baby seal's back. Perhaps if I had grown up among the bears in rural Alaska, living off the fat of the land, or perhaps if my parents had been activists and professors at Berkeley, I would be a better person now. But I grew up in New York. The only real do-gooder message I absorbed was 'don't keep jewelry you find in dressing rooms.'"
— Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There'd Be Cake)

"Shortly after this exchange my roommate suggested we start throwing water balloons at the construction workers. Not really at them because, I know, I know, it's not their fault. But believe me, it's hard to look down and see a man with a seven-speed power drill plowing through a brick wall and tell yourself he's not responsible for the noise."
— Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There'd Be Cake)

"But now my problems had been set loose. They could be anywhere at any time and I was just like everyone else I knew: almost positive that there was something profoundly and undiagnosably wrong with me."
— Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There'd Be Cake)

"She makes several references to Paul making her "burn," almost like she's conjugating verbs. I burn for him. He burns for me. We burn for each other. One cannot help but suspect VD as a factor in their engagement. This comes up again when King defines a "hapahali" as "two people jumping around in the same skin," an image which, like the burning, is disgusting."
— Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There'd Be Cake)

"What annoyed me was that I so often attempted to weasel out of things on purpose, it killed me to do it by accident. It seemed like a waste of whatever detailed lie I was going to have to come up with."
— Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There'd Be Cake)

"It is my belief that people who speak of high school with a sugary fondness are bluffing away early-onset Alzheimer's. "
— Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There'd Be Cake)

"'Hey there.' I cleared my throat. 'How are you?'
'I'm engaged!'
Incidentally, this is an unacceptable answer to that question."
— Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There'd Be Cake)

"The only bit I have pictured in any detail is the music (maybe 'The Book of Love' by the Magnetic Fields. Or Johnny Cash's 'It Ain't Me, Babe'). It doesn't matter if the selection is slow or fast, but couples shouldn't scramble to select it. If you have ever gone dancing or on a road trip or had a romantic bout of serenaded sex on a winter night, you should have a few to pick from. If not, you probably shouldn't be getting married."
— Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There'd Be Cake)

"In my lame pescetarian defense, it's very hard to be a girl and say you won't eat something. Refuse one plate of bacon-wrapped pork rinds and you're anorexic. Accept them and you're on the Atkins. Excuse yourself to go to the bathroom and you're bulimic. Best to keep perfectly still and bring an IV of fluids with you to dinner."
— Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There'd Be Cake)

" and some of the people i knew were contemplating our circumstances. our circumstances being poorly paid jobs if we worked in the arts, two hours of sleep if we worked in money, and a newfound sense of intellectual inferiority if we worked in publishing."
— Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There'd Be Cake)

"i and some of the people i knew were contemplating our circumstances. our circumstances being poorly paid jobs if we worked in the arts, two hours of sleep if we worked in money, and a newfound sense of intellectual inferiority if we worked in publishing"
— Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There'd Be Cake)