London is the Best City in America Quotes

“I couldn't help but wonder if that was what love was -- believing that someone was going to come through, in the end, and that it would still count”
― Laura Dave, London is the Best City in America

“Josh had told me a long time ago that he had this theory that an entire relationship was based on what occurred over the course of the first five minutes you know each other. That everything that came after those first minutes was just details being filled in. Meaning: you already knew how deep the love was, how instinctually you felt about someone.

What happened in their first five minutes?

Time stopped.”
― Laura Dave, London is the Best City in America

“You can't finish the things you weren't supposed to start.”
― Laura Dave, London is the Best City in America

“The part where you need to choose among the choices that are there, and not the ones that aren't there anymore. At least not how you need them to be. You're still stuck on some imaginary idea you have of how it could have been. You need to think about how it is now. And how you want it to be.”
― Laura Dave, London is the Best City in America

“Why could we say more to each other when it counted less?”
― Laura Dave, London is the Best City in America

“That was what I feared most: that he just wasn’t excited about us anymore—that something between us had altered irreversibly. And afterward, I started seeing the evidence everywhere: in the way he didn’t sleep facing me anymore, or the way he’d stopped asking me the questions he used to need to know the answers to, the way he stopped needing to tell me things in order for them to count.”
― Laura Dave, London is the Best City in America

“Someone's affection would give someone else freedom.”
― Laura Dave, London is the Best City in America

“I don't think you get to be mad at someone unless they come through for you. I don't think you have that luxury. I think you think you can be mad, but really you're just doing something else."

"What's that?"

"Waiting.”
― Laura Dave, London is the Best City in America

“Where do we go from here? I started off this crazy weekend by trying to make sense of these moments—these moments that you know you’re going to remember—but like anything else, nothing exists without its opposite. So maybe it makes a certain kind of sense that I ended up thinking about the moments you know you’ll forget. Or, more accurately, try to remember incorrectly. How do we all learn how to do that? Relive something again and again in our heads until it takes on a slightly different light, a less truthful tone, until the memory can’t injure us as directly, until it joins the ranks of the more manageable.”
― Laura Dave, London is the Best City in America

“If things were eventually going to work out, did it matter how you got there? Didn’t it ultimately just matter that you got the ending you wanted?”
― Laura Dave, London is the Best City in America

“I just think people forget what it feels like to really be in love, you know? Like when that’s the only thing in the world that matters. I just don’t want to decide it’s not that important.”
― Laura Dave, London is the Best City in America

“I’d want to remember how I had felt sitting here—to take it with me, this sense of relief I knew we were both feeling, the quietly growing momentum that eventually I’d understand comes from letting go of the things you were holding on too tightly to in the first place.”
― Laura Dave, London is the Best City in America

“You can’t finish the things you weren’t supposed to start.”
― Laura Dave, London is the Best City in America

“This wasn’t because he liked me, I was sure. It had more to do with him banking on what we of wedding age had all become witnesses to—how during these wedding weekends, single women, feeling a little lonely, maybe, or just feeling a little too far from being the bride, found themselves loosening their own rules, opting to be more flexible, more quickly.”
― Laura Dave, London is the Best City in America

“But about living, fully, even while you’re waiting for whatever it is you think you want.”
― Laura Dave, London is the Best City in America

“What happened the day I met your father,” she said, “is that I learned you have to choose. For better or for worse. You have to choose what your life is going to look like.”
― Laura Dave, London is the Best City in America

“trying to make sense of these moments—these moments that you know you’re going to remember—but like anything else, nothing exists without its opposite.”
― Laura Dave, London is the Best City in America

“I ended up thinking about the moments you know you’ll forget. Or, more accurately, try to remember incorrectly. How do we all learn how to do that? Relive something again and again in our heads until it takes on a slightly different light, a less truthful tone, until the memory can’t injure us as directly, until it joins the ranks of the more manageable?”
― Laura Dave, London is the Best City in America

“the study said the reason for this was the same across the board: men don’t want to be the bad guy. They don’t want to make a mistake they can’t unmake. They want, only, for someone else to decide.”
― Laura Dave, London is the Best City in America

“over 75 percent of the time it is the woman who ends a marriage or a long-term living situation. The man may do something to make her want to leave—he may be unfaithful or lie to her or push her away—but ultimately, if she doesn’t leave him, he will stay also.”
― Laura Dave, London is the Best City in America

“You can’t finish the things you weren’t supposed to start.’ She was so freaked out that we kept trying to think about all the examples of that not being true. Different relationships or jobs or even movies we’d only sat through half of. A hundred things. But even though I don’t usually take advice from fortune cookies, I have to say, the more we were trying to prove the argument false, the more I started to think there might be some truth to it.”
― Laura Dave, London is the Best City in America

“I was intrigued by the idea of the “Hollywood ending,” people always associating the term with meaning a happy ending, when in reality it seemed to me that the truly classic Hollywood films—like Casablanca, The Graduate, Chinatown—often had endings that were, at the very least, more uncertain than happy.”
― Laura Dave, London is the Best City in America

“Statistics from a ten-year Princeton University study on the nature of modern marriages and domestic partnerships indicate that over 75 percent of the time it is the woman who ends a marriage or a long-term living situation. The man may do something to make her want to leave—he may be unfaithful or lie to her or push her away—but ultimately, if she doesn’t leave him, he will stay also. After time, he will want to work it out and be good to her again, and try to make things better. And if that’s what the woman really wants—if she just stays still long enough—in the end, she’ll get her wish. Psychologists who conducted the study said the reason for this was the same across the board: men don’t want to be the bad guy. They don’t want to make a mistake they can’t unmake. They want, only, for someone else to decide.”
― Laura Dave, London is the Best City in America

“If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life. —Oscar Wilde”
― Laura Dave, London is the Best City in America

“I’d remember Matt, and I’d remember him wrong. And that was probably when I’d miss him most.”
― Laura Dave, London is the Best City in America

“The part where you need to choose among the choices that are there, and not the ones that aren’t anymore. At least not how you need them to be. You’re still stuck on some imaginary idea you have of how it could have been. You need to think about how it is now. And how you want it to be.”
― Laura Dave, London is the Best City in America

“tie a silk scarf around her neck and not have it be ironic.”
― Laura Dave, London is the Best City in America

“newspaper at that very table, and was racing”
― Laura Dave, London is the Best City in America