How Did You Get This Number Quotes

“If you have to ask someone to change, to tell you they love you, to bring wine to dinner, to call you when they land, you can’t afford to be with them. It’s not worth the price, even though, just like the Tiffany catalog, no one tells you what the price is. You set it yourself, and if you’re lucky it’s reasonable. You have a sense of when you’re about to go bankrupt. Your own sense of self-worth takes the wheel and says, Enough of this shit. Stop making excuses. No one’s that busy at work. No one’s allergic to whipped cream. There are too cell phones in Sweden. But most people don’t get lucky. They get human. They get crushes. This means you irrationally mortgage what little logic you own to pay for this one thing. This relationship is an impulse buy, and you’ll figure out if it’s worth it later.”
― Sloane Crosley, How Did You Get This Number: Essays

“On occasion, it occurs to adults that they are allowed to do all the things that being a child prevented them from doing. But those desires change when you're not looking. There was a time when your favorite color transferred from purple to blue to whatever shade it is when you realize having a favorite color is a trite personality crutch, an unstable cultivation of quirk and a possible cry for help. You just don't notice the time of your own metamorphosis. Until you do. Every once in a while time dissolves and you remember what you liked as a kid. You jump on your hotel bed, order dessert first, decide to put every piece of jewelry you own on your body and leave the house. Why? Because you can. Because you're the boss. Because . . . Ooooh. Shiny. ”
― Sloane Crosley, How Did You Get This Number: Essays

“Time grabs you by the scruff of your neck and drags you forward. You get over it, of course. Everyone was right about that. One mathematically insignificant day, you stop hoping for happiness and become actually happy.”
― Sloane Crosley, How Did You Get This Number: Essays

“Friendship is a Spackle in itself. You'll forgive your friends a lot, and if you're a woman, you'll forgive your straight male friends even more. They represent the possibility of mutual toleration between the sexes, a keyhole into the mind of the Other, and the promise of one day meeting someone just like them except that you want to sleep with them.”
― Sloane Crosley, How Did You Get This Number: Essays

“If you have to ask someone to change, to tell you they love you, to bring wine to dinner, to call you when they land, you can't afford to be with them.”
― Sloane Crosley, How Did You Get This Number: Essays

“I prefer to record all traumas and save them for later, playing them over and over so they can haunt me for a disproportionate number of weeks to come. It's very healthy.”
― Sloane Crosley, How Did You Get This Number: Essays

“A human being can spend only so much time outside her comfort zone before she realizes she is still tethered to it.”
― Sloane Crosley, How Did You Get This Number: Essays

“When it seems impossible that a deep connection with another person could just go away instead of changing form. It seems impossible that you will one day look up and say the words "I used to date someone who lived in that building," referring to a three-year relationship. As simple as if it was a pizza place that is now a dry cleaner's. It happens. Keep walking.”
― Sloane Crosley, How Did You Get This Number: Essays

“The nursery rhyme ends when a spider comes along and frightens Miss Muffet straight off her tuffet. I have wondered about what kind of lesson this is for a young girl. If you're eating your curds and whey and a spider comes along, I don't think there's anything wrong with picking up a newspaper, smashing it, and going back to your breakfast.”
― Sloane Crosley, How Did You Get This Number: Essays

“It's never good to fall in love with someone whom you'd have to stab in the eyeballs to elicit a response.”
― Sloane Crosley, How Did You Get This Number: Essays

“There is one thing you know for sure, one fact that never fails to comfort you: the worst day of your life wasn't in there, in that mess. And it will do you good to remember the best day of your life wasn't in there, either. But another person brought you closer to those borders than you had been, and maybe that's not such a bad thing.”
― Sloane Crosley, How Did You Get This Number: Essays

“Most people don't get lucky. They get human. They get crushes. This means you irrationally mortgage what little logic you own to pay for this one thing. This relationship is an impulse buy, and you'll figure out if it's worth it later.”
― Sloane Crosley, How Did You Get This Number: Essays

“I was compiling a list in my head titled 'Reasons to Get Up: You Don't Have to Leave, but You Can't Pee Here.”
― Sloane Crosley, How Did You Get This Number: Essays

“Not all shabby is chic, just like not every porn actor is a star.”
― Sloane Crosley, How Did You Get This Number: Essays

“How can we not still be rooting for the younger versions of ourselves as if they actually exist, playing catch-up in time? Who wouldn’t like to implant their current brains into a scenario from the past?”
― Sloane Crosley, How Did You Get This Number: Essays

“I am trying to absorb the situation and would like to do my absorption in peace. In general, I prefer to record all traumas and save them for later, playing them over and over so they can haunt me for a disproportionate number of weeks to come. It’s very healthy.”
― Sloane Crosley, How Did You Get This Number: Essays

“In stressful situations, people often talk about a fight-or-flight response. Which, in my opinion, doesn’t give enough credit to the more common reaction of curling up into a little ball. […] For once, I made the decision to play it cool. Or stupid. Whichever came first.

-“Le Paris!” in How Did You Get This Number, by Sloane Crosley (2010), P. 219-220”
― Sloane Crosley, How Did You Get This Number: Essays

“I can feel the tingling in my hand as if I've already slapped her, so right does it feel.”
― Sloane Crosley, How Did You Get This Number: Essays

“The lies we construct to defend ourselves from humiliation are the strongest, refusing to be torn down.”
― Sloane Crosley, How Did You Get This Number: Essays

“You miss the idea of him. There you go. Was that so hard? “That goes away, too,” says your friend. Through the magic of the biological imperative, his brain has been reprogrammed. He has been forced to gloss over his own romantic carnage so that he might once again start down that road of procreation. He has nineteen layers of skin; you have three-fourths of a layer. They’re all like this, the recovered. Sometimes you want to hop across the table, curl up in their laps, and beg to be made one of them. How does it work? Hypnosis? A chip in the neck? A radioactive spider with Xanax venom?”
― Sloane Crosley, How Did You Get This Number: Essays

“On occasion, it occurs to adults that they are allowed to do all the things that being a child prevented them from doing.”
― Sloane Crosley, How Did You Get This Number

“You should never wear anything you can't afford to lose.”
― Sloane Crosley, How Did You Get This Number: Essays

“People tend to be more tofu-like, able to absorb whatever environment they're dropped into. But where does the adaptability end and your actual personality begin?”
― Sloane Crosley, How Did You Get This Number: Essays

“It's not a disability, it's life. We are complicated creatures with larger matters on our plate than tip calculation. I grew up watching TV with my mother while she diagnosed the characters as having hyperactivity or attention-deficit disorder. I rolled my eyes and wondered why there weren't any stupid kids anymore. Why did there have to be something to explain everyone? Were the cave people on Ritalin? I didn't think so.”
― Sloane Crosley, How Did You Get This Number: Essays

“Sang’s ass was not so much an ass but a continuation of leg and bone, covered by pockets because society demanded it be covered by pockets.”
― Sloane Crosley, How Did You Get This Number: Essays

“The mortality rate among sea horses is not to be believed. Because the difference between a dead sea horse and a living sea horse is imperceptible, selling dead sea horses would make a very good pet store scam.”
― Sloane Crosley, How Did You Get This Number: Essays

“You don’t notice the time line of your own metamorphosis. Until you do. Every once in a while, time dissolves and you remember what you liked as a kid. You jump on your hotel bed, order dessert first, decide to put every piece of jewelry you own on your body and leave the house. Why? Because you can. Because you’re the boss. Because…”
― Sloane Crosley, How Did You Get This Number: Essays

“One mathematically insignificant day, you stop hoping for happiness and become actually happy. Okay, on occasion, you do worry about yourself. You worry about what this experience has tapped into. What will be left of it when the surface area shrinks? How will you make sense of it after the compulsion to have others make sense of it for you has faded? There is one thing you know for sure, one fact that never fails to comfort you: the worst day of your life wasn’t in there, in that mess. And it will do you good to remember the best day of your life wasn’t in there, either.”
― Sloane Crosley, How Did You Get This Number

“You just don't notice the time line of your own metamorphosis. Until you do.”
― Sloane Crosley, How Did You Get This Number: Essays

“My resentment is rising. I am trying to absorb the situation and would like to do my absorption in peace. In general, I prefer to record all traumas and save them for later, playing them over and over so they can haunt me for a disproportionate number of weeks to come. It’s very healthy.”
― Sloane Crosley, How Did You Get This Number: Essays