Crush Quotes

“You have to ask: If this was my last year alive, how would I want to spend it? If I had thirty years? If you’re saying ‘Things are good enough—why should I blow them up?’The answer is because ‘good enough’should not be the goal,”she said. “We didn’t work this hard”—by “we”I sensed she meant women—“to be fine.”
― Ada Calhoun, Crush

“I’d roam around the city and either I’d take myself out or eat with a friend. All food tasted delicious. I suddenly loved beer. I walked twenty thousand steps a day, wore dresses instead of jeans, and scribbled notes on scraps of paper. I was in love with the world and felt like it was in love with me. I wanted to kiss everyone I saw. I wouldn’t, probably, but now who knew?”
― Ada Calhoun, Crush

“The real answer was because if I didn’t hold him in my arms immediately I thought I would implode. And I believed that I could handle it. I was delirious , but I wasn’t dumb. I knew that at some point something might shift, that I’d want to be with him instead of Paul. But with everyone working hard to keep that from happening, I had faith that the threat was remote. I believed that I was mature enough to remain composed. Yes, if we were all in our twenties I might run after him, but we were old. We knew that just because you felt something didn’t mean you had to do anything about it . And as far as I was concerned, divorce was off the table.”
― Ada Calhoun, Crush

“I knew I’d fallen in love with Paul, but that had been so long ago. I wondered if maybe I’d forgotten how it felt, the way people forget the pain of childbirth (though I had not forgotten that), but I didn’t remember it being so all-consuming. I needed to stay married though. I’d made a promise, and I intended to keep it. My mother did not raise me not to keep promises. If she’d managed to stay with her husband, surely I could stick it out with mine.”
― Ada Calhoun, Crush

“You know as well as I do.
I did know as well as he did, yes. But I know something more than he did too--I knew that no matter how much philosophy we wrapped around our love, our fate would no longer sit still, letting itself be appreciated and accepted; now that it had been invoked, our fate was coming for us.”
― Ada Calhoun, Crush

“I knew that by saying what we had was perfect already he thought we didn't need to do anything about it; it could just exist. But he was wrong. He'd lived so much of his life in his own head that he didn't know what I did. Once those words were spoken, even if they were gussied up with Nietzsche, something did change, instantly and forever.”
― Ada Calhoun, Crush

“He mailed me a little copy of Michel de Montaigne's On Friendship (1580): "In the friendship which I am talking about, sounds are mingled and confounded in so universal a blessing that they effaced the seam which joins them together so that it cannot be found. If you press me to say why I love him, I feel that it cannot be expressed except by replying: 'Because it was him: because it was me.”
― Ada Calhoun, Crush

“I'd always tried to put my finger in an ofd feeling I've had at least once every time while becoming close with a new person--a sort of squeamishness. The person says something, does something that you would have said bothered you, something embarrassing or silly or too sincere. Instead of rejecting the gesture and condemning them, you embrace it, think, Maybe I do like someone who chews on their hair. Maybe I find an ironic T-shirt collection adorable.”
― Ada Calhoun, Crush

“Crushes had always made me feel powerful. This was the opposite. I was lit up, but I wasn't in control. None of my old tricks worked anymore. I was rich in a defunct currency. A trillion zloty and I couldn't buy a stick of gum.”
― Ada Calhoun, Crush

“I'd thought I wanted him to like me, but it turned out I wanted to be like him.”
― Ada Calhoun, Crush

“I craved a connection to the eternal, an undeniable encounter with the ineffable. Something was calling me, but I couldn't name what it was. I thought perhaps I was looking for someone or something to love with my whole heart. Whether that meant religion or romantic love, surely God or men would take me out of myself; either one would do.”
― Ada Calhoun, Crush

“I scoffed at people who were led around by their feelings like leashed dogs.”
― Ada Calhoun, Crush

“Crushes were how you stayed a little bit in love with the world even though you had a husband.”
― Ada Calhoun, Crush

“I thought of a line I’d heard about problems just being questions asked in the wrong way.”
― Ada Calhoun, Crush

“I loved seeing people trying to do something difficult and onlookers telling them they could do it.”
― Ada Calhoun, Crush

“always wondered how anyone could look at a tree or a baby and not believe in some sort of animating spirit beyond what we could see or prove.”
― Ada Calhoun, Crush

“I read a book about the Gaelic concept of anam cara, or “soul friend,” the person with whom you could share your deepest self and feel that you completely belonged.”
― Ada Calhoun, Crush

“Rilke said that books are like a sealed envelope passed to the future,” I said. “People sometimes think writing and reading are solitary acts. But both can be a way to see and be seen more clearly.”
― Ada Calhoun, Crush

“At any time before that, I’d have been afraid of making a spectacle of myself. But I no longer cared what people thought about my subpar singing voice or about my love life.”
― Ada Calhoun, Crush

“Tell me what you want. Let’s see if we can figure out how you can have it.”
― Ada Calhoun, Crush

“Love does not lead to an end to difficulties,” bell hooks wrote, “it provides us with the means to cope with our difficulties in ways that enhance our growth.”
― Ada Calhoun, Crush

“Santa is bigger than any person, and his work has gone on longer than any of us have lived…. Throughout your life, you will need this capacity to believe: in yourself, in your friends, in your talents, and in your family. You’ll also need to believe in things you can’t measure or even hold in your hand. Here, I am talking about love…. Santa is love and magic and hope and happiness. I’m on his team, and now you are, too.” How”
― Ada Calhoun, Crush

“We were with references like sharks are with blood in the water, snatching and tearing, smearing ourselves with words and sounds— and learning how to see the world through each other’s eyes.”
― Ada Calhoun, Crush

“Day after day, he sent me photos of pages he was reading, looking for an answer. In such photos, my eye went to his thumb holding down the page before I saw the words. I saw worlds in the wrinkles at his knuckles, the tension with which he held the books. The truth was I just wanted to see him so bad. It was all I could think about. Every night, the cat’s yowls echoed down the street. I really wished that cat would shut the fuck up.”
― Ada Calhoun, Crush

“Emerson pointed to an intimacy beyond romantic love. Learning that lesson, David and I could avoid getting caught up in anything physical, temporal, or earthly. Our love could grow and spread outward into the world. We could see that not as a sacrifice but as a gift.”
― Ada Calhoun, Crush

“Books are powerful--you have to give book banners that. You could be the best librarian on earth and not know what book will do what, when, to whom. Generations of people could read The Sorrows of Young Werther without incident. Are you going to ban it because of a couple of then read it and then jumped off a bridge?”
― Ada Calhoun, Crush

“I love you, my dear, dear friend. I hope you share my pride in the great love we have created--a love greater than both of us, mysterious to both of us, and that you know as well as I do that this moment--tonight--that love is in a state of perfection.”
― Ada Calhoun, Crush

“Prayers change the person praying too--they pull you closer to your better self.”
― Ada Calhoun, Crush

“We didn't know quite what to do with each other except marvel. Our connection had begun to feel like a religious calling. In our correspondence I felt like I'd embarked on a pilgrimage, only with no clue where it led. In his presence I began to feel more and more like myself, but for the first time. I also felt like I'd been hugging the world hard my whole life, and now the world's arms were wrapping around me and squeezing back.”
― Ada Calhoun, Crush

“. . . every morning at drop-off I said as he went up the stairs, "I love you! Have fun! Care less!" Maybe that was good advice.”
― Ada Calhoun, Crush