More, Now, Again Quotes

“For all of my life I have needed more.”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction

“I can see that I imagine all kinds of rejection that never happens. I can see that I beg and plead for love that is freely offered because I somehow believe that if I don't ask for it, everyone will forget about me: I will be a little kid sent off to sleep-away camp whose parents forget to meet her at the bus when she comes back in August. Or else I think people are nice to me only to be nice to me, that they feel sorry for me because I am such a loser- as if anyone could possibly be that generous.”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction

“I’ve been looking for a feeling like that everywhere I go. I’ve been waiting for someone to see all the good in me at every truck stop and intersection along the way. I’ve been waiting all my life for the moment to arrive when I can just stop. Stop looking”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction

“I need to start thinking more like an engineer and less like a scientist: I need to think about what works, not about why.

The problem was me. I was it.

That's what I believed. I believed I was the everything.

The largeness of my disaster dragged others- frankly, everyone- down with me. I was certain that entire rooms of people became vertiginously joyous when I was high and having fun, and that anyone who got near me when I was morose and coming down would have to feel my pain as potently as I did. Whether I was high or low, the intensity was so great and the world became so small- no larger than the size of me and my mood of the moment- that it was hard to imagine that anything else was going on. It was hard to believe that there were things happening in the world that were not about me.”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction

“Banned! My eyes light up, I think I see stars. Anything that has been banned by anyone must be something I’d like.”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction

“It's being a grown up, which I never figured out how to do, scrubbing the tub, and remembering to eat and shampoo my hair. It's the basics: I can write a whole book, but I cannot handle the basics.”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, More, Now, Again

“The desire to be seen as superior and singular- and, conversely, but similarly, inferior and individual, is a big topic...They have a term for the syndrome- it is called terminal uniqueness...we all refuse to be part of the crowd, to walk in the middle of the road in the safety of others. We all think were special. But the problem is, as I point out to Dr. Singer all the time, I actually am special.”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction

“Even if I remember the first time perfectly, I don't remember the beginning at all. I mean: the beginning of addiction. It's hard to say when it becomes a problem; it sneaks up on you like a sun shower.”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction

“When she walks in that first Monday, of course I am awake - I am always up these days - I decide to lay it down. “Look”, I say, “I snort Ritalin. That’s what I do. I snort it all day long. I crush up the pills and inhale them like cocaine. I’m up to about forty a day. I can’t stop. I am planning to get help, to check into rehab or something like that, as soon as this book is finished. In the meantime, I can’t stop, and I am not going to.” She looks at me impassively. “I don’t care what you think about it. So you have a choice. I can sit here and do it in front of you, or I can keep running into the bathroom so you don’t have to see. Either way, it’s going to happen, so it’s just about how bad it’s going to make you feel to watch.”
She doesn’t seem to know what to say. She stares. I think she is going to cry. I think she wants to give me a hug, maybe, but there is an invisible cage, a delicate netting of glass, an ice sculpture surrounding me that no one can walk through. I’m cold. I’ve frozen into someone who just can’t be touched. I dare you to try.”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction

“And then I think of the Velvet Underground's doleful song "Jesus," from their third and least renowned or appreciated album. It is my favorite. "Jesus / Help me find my proper place / Help me in my weakness / 'Cause I'm falling out of grace." The only words in the song, repeated repeatedly, composed by Lou Reed, a Jew. You see, in the hour of darkness, it is easier to turn to the Son of God than to God Himself, for some reason. I'm not sure why.”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction

“Time passes slowly, or too fast, or it makes no difference.”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, More, Now, Again

“If you already know what your response will be before you've heard what the other person has said, you are not listening.”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction

“When you do drugs, you count like a chemist: The numbers are wild, the formulas are easy. Then, when you try to get clean, you start to count like a pharmacist: How many hours between doses? How much or how little do you need to maintain? Then, when you finally give it up completely, you count like Noah in his dinky, seafaring ark full of pairs of every animal in God's creation: You count days. You wait for the rain to stop, for the sky to clear, for life to ever seem normal again. And then eventually it does. Then you start to count how many cups of black coffee you need just to get through every day, how many cigarettes you smoke. You know the address of every Starbucks in a mile radius, which is easy because there so many, and you know the names of every restaurant where they allow you to smoke, which is easy because they are so few.”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction

“A deeply true, wholly aching account of the dangerous way we live now--LOVE JUNKIE is great fun to read, and finally fully redemptive. Rachel Resnick brings a light, delightful touch to a hard subject, and creates a great, relatable, readable memoir.”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction

“Sometimes someone will be standing in front of me, and already I feel him walking away. It's only a matter of time, so what's the point?”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction

“I don't much like my life, but for some dumb reason, I want to be alive, because sooner or later, I figure it will work out.”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction

“This is how it is, how it always is with men: It feels good at first, it feels soft and solid, slipping into love, sliding into the sweet thing. But then it’s just like falling into a muck. Everything I learned at Silver Hill is gone. I am obsessed with Hank— Hank! My friend Hank! —the way I’ve been with everyone else before him. And I could say something, should say something, should make this stop before it gets any worse, but I’m not going to do that. I can’t. I am not good at walking before I have to run. I’m an idiot. I deserve to be a drug addict. I never learn.”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, More, Now, Again

“And these pills are deep inside of me. What person could ever get this close? Who would want to? And I swear to you, and I don’t care how this sounds, I think it’s love. If you don’t understand, you don’t know what love is.”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction

“Kiku teaches me a good lesson. She says that if you already know what your response will be before you've heard what the other person has said, you are not listening.”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction by Elizabeth Wurtzel

“I write books, I give lectures, I have good friends, I am a good listener and a better talker—I have an entire personality that is not entirely unappealing; but the only part of myself I really believe in, that I really think men care about, is my body. Sometimes I think that if I just got a job as a stripper or a go-go girl, if I danced in a cage with men throwing twenties at me, let their fingers stuff bills in my red lace garter belt, it would be more honest than all the things I actually do to earn a living:”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, More, Now, Again

“And I start to mumble to myself, or maybe I’m just talking in my own head, but I beg Whoever or Whatever is out there to maybe, please, someday and some way, reveal to me a little bit of that divine glory. Whatever tiny corner of a shred of paper is left over from someone else’s happiness, I’ll be happy to have it for my own. I start bargaining with God, making a deal, something about showing me love for the world as is, for myself as is. I’ll be good, I promise, I promise I’ll be good,”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, More, Now, Again

“That’s the crucial difference between Hank and me: my personality is not predicated on drugs. For the first twenty-seven years of my life, I did not have much of a relationship with controlled substances at all. I had my phase during my freshman year of college, but that mainly involved Ecstasy, and by sophomore year I had lost interest. Hank started drinking before he was a teenager. His development into an adult was completely shaped by alcohol. For him to be sober is not natural; he would need to re-create his heart and soul in order to accommodate a life without booze,”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, More, Now, Again

“Now that we’re sleeping together, I need him to check in with me regularly. Every day? Every hour? I’m not sure what exactly regularly means. Maybe Hank can devise a mathematical formula, like the one that measures the speed of terminal velocity, to assess how many phone calls it takes to satisfy my notion of regularly. It could be an SAT question. Something like, if x = most people and y = Elizabeth, which of the following four equations expresses the difference between normal need and Elizabeth’s need? Until someone comes up with an answer, all I know is that I feel desperate all the time.”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, More, Now, Again

“You see, I tell myself, here is the reason to stay clean: because life is so ridiculous, and if you’re sober, it’s funny; if you’re high, it’s just depressing. Or maybe it’s the opposite. But I hope not.”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, More, Now, Again

“kind of funny that you’re high maintenance and difficult,”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, More, Now, Again

“But the best thing about you is that you’re smart,” he says. “Not clever and bitchy smart, the way you are with everyone around the Cottage. You should cut that out. You don’t give anyone a chance to know you and find out what a great person you are, that you’re very good to talk to. No one will ever find that out if you keep letting all these other things get in the way. You’re wasting your intelligence trying to show everyone how intelligent you are, and it just pushes people away. Not everybody wants to get mixed up in all your badinage. You should stop doing that. You’re so much better than your own behavior.”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, More, Now, Again

“I see her obsessive crush on Hank and remember every single time I became infatuated with some guy who wished I would just leave him alone. I remember that a large part of the reason I started doing cocaine long ago was to distract myself while I waited for some man to call me, and I remember that one of the reasons I ran away from Florida was to escape the pursuit of pursuing romance. These episodes—and I don’t know if it’s right to refer to a constant state of affairs as episodes —have been so painful for me that I actually have empathy for Adlai.”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, More, Now, Again

“I mean, the reason I do drugs is because the world is so capricious and unpredictable. You do nice things, and people are mean in return, or you act like an ogre, and people are incredibly kind in response. Sometimes a plus b equals c, but lots of times it doesn’t.”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, More, Now, Again