Cult Classic Quotes

“This was before I knew that the timing of a cruel thing does not make it more or less cruel, before I knew that only good way to hurt someone is never.”
― Sloane Crosley, Cult Classic

“Love is agreeing to live in someone else's narrative.”
― Sloane Crosley, Cult Classic

“The reality of an image both expands and narrows the imagination. It breathes, inhaling the new understanding and exhaling the old one.”
― Sloane Crosley, Cult Classic

“Romance may be the world’s oldest cult. It hooks you when you’re vulnerable, scares the shit out of you, hold your deepest fears as collateral, renames you something like ‘baby,’ brainwashes you, then makes you think that your soul will wither and die if you let go of a person who loved you. So you better have a good goddamn reason for saying ‘nah, not enough.’ The love lobby is worse than the fun lobby. More misery, more addiction, more heads on spikes. And for what?”
― Sloane Crosley, Cult Classic

“It’s unfortunate, I thought, how some of the world’s most productive conversations are breakup conversations. People think, “If only we could have talked like this the whole time, things would’ve been different.” But you couldn’t have. That level of honesty requires a resoluteness achievable only by being within spitting distance of the exit.”
― Sloane Crosley, Cult Classic

“Just because something ends prematurely doesn't mean it won't end eventually. Usually that's exactly what it means.”
― Sloane Crosley, Cult Classic

“The older a woman got, the more diligent she had to become about not burdening men with the gory details of her past, lest she scare them off. That was the name of the game: Don’t Scare the Men. Those who encouraged you to indulge in your impulse to share, largely did so to expedite a bus. Like I felt the wind of the bus. I could even see a couple of the passengers, all shaken by a potential suicide. And out of nowhere, the guy rushes over, yanks me toward him, and escorts me out of the street.”
“The birthday boy?”
“No, different guy. You all start to look the same after a while, you know that? Anyway, we were both so high on adrenaline, we couldn’t stop laughing the whole night. Then he asked me out. Now one of our jokes is about that time I flung myself into traffic to avoid him.”
“You were in shock.”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“Why isn’t the joke that he saved your life?”
“I don’t know, Amos,” I said, folding my fingers together. “Maybe we’re both waiting for the day I turn around and say, ‘That’s right, asshole, I did fling myself into traffic to avoid you.’ I’m joking.”
“Are you?”
“Am I?” I mimicked him. “Should the day come when you manage to face-plant yourself into a relationship, you’ll find there are certain fragile truths every couple has. Sometimes I’m uncomfortable with the power, knowing I could break us up if I wanted. Other times, I want to blow it up just because it’s there. But then the feeling passes.”
“That’s bleak.”
“To you, it is. But I’m not like you. I don’t need to escape every room I’m in.”
“But you are like me. You think you want monogamy, but you probably don’t if you dated me.”
“You’re faulting me for liking you now?”
“All I’m saying is you can’t just will yourself into being satisfied with this guy.”
“Watch me,” I said, trying to burn a hole in his face.
“If it were me, the party would have been our first date and it never would have ended.”
“Oh, yes it would have,” I said, laughing. “The date would have lasted one week, but the whole relationship would have lasted one month.”
“Yeah,” he said, “you’re right.”
“I know I’m right.”
“It wouldn’t have lasted.”
“This is what I’m saying.”
“Because if I were this dude, I would have left you by now.”
Before I could say anything, Amos excused himself to pee. On the bathroom door was a black and gold sticker in the shape of a man. I felt a rage rise up all the way to my eyeballs, thinking of how naturally Amos associated himself with that sticker, thinking of him aligning himself with every powerful, brilliant, thoughtful man who has gone through that door as well as every stupid, entitled, and cruel one, effortlessly merging with a class of people for whom the world was built.
I took my phone out, opening the virtual cuckoo clocks, trying to be somewhere else. I was confronted with a slideshow of a female friend’s dead houseplants, meant to symbolize inadequacy within reason. Amos didn’t have a clue what it was like to be a woman in New York, unsure if she’s with the right person. Even if I did want to up and leave Boots, dating was not a taste I’d acquired. The older a woman got, the more diligent she had to become about not burdening men with the gory details of her past, lest she scare them off. That was the name of the game: Don’t Scare the Men. Those who encouraged you to indulge in your impulse to share, largely did so to expedite a decision. They knew they were on trial too, but our courtrooms had more lenient judges.”
― Sloane Crosley, Cult Classic

“You'll find there are certain fragile truths every couple has.”
― Sloane Crosley, Cult Classic

“You know who gets to drink coffee at fuck-you hours, I thought? The French.”
― Sloane Crosley, Cult Classic

“Men, who can be so oblivious in most arenas, are very good a knowing when a woman’s heart has left the building.”
― Sloane Crosley, Cult Classic

“The city was a parade of places shut down, left early from, arrived late to, sat in front of, met to say goodbye at. This is how it was for everyone. If you wait long enough, anyplace will become a barracks of the romantic undead, a sprawling museum of personal bombs.”
― Sloane Crosley, Cult Classic

“I fell for the projection and forgot the person.”
― Sloane Crosley, Cult Classic

“Even if I was only ever borrowing someone else’s certainty, it would become mine eventually.”
― Sloane Crosley, Cult Classic

“Too often New Yorkers treated experiences as vaccinations. They went to the Whitney every two years, Coney Island every five, the ballet every twenty.”
― Sloane Crosley, Cult Classic

“Men do not like to entertain the idea that they have destroyed someone, so they behave as if they haven't.”
― Sloane Crosley, Cult Classic

“Some of us get smaller denominations from the romance ATM than others. In addition to the flings, I’d had about fifteen five-month relationships, not to mention the six- and nine-month relationships, not to mention the on-and-off ones that came to life in the night like haunted toaster ovens: You up?”
― Sloane Crosley, Cult Classic

“Being a kid is like this. Your parents pack you a suitcase full of pedagogical messaging and by the time you're grown, it turns out most of the items were perishable anyway.”
― Sloane Crosley, Cult Classic

“Men,” I said, plunking my chair to the floor. “I can never decide if I forgive them too easily or punish them too easily. My whole life, I’ve never known.”
― Sloane Crosley, Cult Classic

“Everyone has had that inkling, right? Like for some reason you are just not meant to pair. And on your good days, you think, hey, it’s because my heart is too big to get through anyone’s tunnel. And on your bad days, you think it’s because my heart is this tiny petrified piece of shit and it passes through other people like a kidney stone. Like it’s either nothing or it causes excruciating pain.” “Zach,”
― Sloane Crosley, Cult Classic

“Then where’s my thank-you for training him out of jackhammering her pussy? He used to jam all his fingers up there like it’s ‘To Build a Fire’ and he’s using me for warmth, like he wanted to use my fallopian tubes for mittens. Like there’s a fucking game show buzzer up there. Like you know what I want to know? Who are the bitches before me who just let it happen?” Boots”
― Sloane Crosley, Cult Classic

“How badly can you be hurt by someone whose handwriting you’ve never seen?”
― Sloane Crosley, Cult Classic

“It’s difficult to comfort oneself by shrinking one’s emotions without conceding that one has allowed those emotions to expand, unchecked, in the first place.”
― Sloane Crosley, Cult Classic

“The same event could happen to four different people and one would deem it a coup, another kismet, another ironic, another auspicious. A coup signified chaos, kismet signified fate, irony signified order, auspicious signified faith. Meanwhile, odds were quantifiable but chances were not. Chances were abstract and “for” whereas odds were concrete and “against.”
― Sloane Crosley, Cult Classic

“The older a woman got, the more diligent she had to become about not burdening men with the gory details of her past, lest she scare them off. That was the name of the game: Don’t Scare the Men. Those who encouraged you to indulge in your impulse to share, largely did so to expedite a decision. They knew they were on trial too, but our courtrooms had more lenient judges.”
― Sloane Crosley, Cult Classic

“A hero without a damsel is a mere man.”
― Sloane Crosley, Cult Classic

“This is New York,' I explained. 'Everything is outside everyone’s comfort zone.”
― Sloane Crosley, Cult Classic

“I don’t think I meant a word of it. But this is how you speak when you’re in a bathroom stall in your twenties, high on cocaine, and testing the depths of your friendships.”
― Sloane Crosley, Cult Classic

“Had Cupid’s bastard cherubs snuck into my bedroom and whispered in my ear, “My child, never commit.” I’d begun to suspect that my search an inciting incident was the inciting incident. But before I could get to the bottom of it, I met Boots, who made it all stop, who could not unbreak me by who could protect me from the narrative of the broken.”
― Sloane Crosley, Cult Classic

“I think, if closure exists, it’s being okay with a lack of it.”
― Sloane Crosley, Cult Classic

“That was the name of the game: Don’t Scare the Men. Those who encouraged you to indulge in your impulse to share, largely did so to expedite a decision. They knew they were on trial too, but our courtrooms had more lenient judges. These men quizzed you about every hurt and humiliation until you were so flattered by the inquiry, you forgot that quizzes are made to be failed. This process was made worse by the garb of flirtation.”
― Sloane Crosley, Cult Classic