Binnie Kirshenbaum > Quotes

“Everyone does deserve a second chance, although we don't often get one, and even when we do get a second chance, we're likely to make the same mistake again. The things we learn later rather than sooner tend to result from harsh lessons, but mostly we learn nothing at all.”
― Binnie Kirshenbaum, The Scenic Route

“The end of all things--a book, a life, a summer, a marriage, the last bite of cake, the last of innocence lost, a love affair--is always sad, at least a little bit sad, because it is the end, the end of that.”
― Binnie Kirshenbaum, The Scenic Route

“To not want to be alive is not the same thing as wanting to be dead.”
― Binnie Kirshenbaum, Rabbits for Food

“Hers was not love lost; it was love denied.”
― Binnie Kirshenbaum, The Scenic Route

“
I loved Vincent and he loved me in the abiding way most couples in good marriages love each other, that way in which every once in a while there is a longing for someone you haven't yet met. A longing that comes upon you while you are loading the dishwasher or weeding the garden or sitting in front of the television or turning out the light to go to sleep, and you don't even know what it is, this longing, and you think maybe you're in need of a vacation or maybe you are dying because the ache of it hurts so fucking much…That ache, it went away when I met Henry; it went away as if it had been a headache instead of located nowhere precisely. Its not that I *wanted* to fall in love with Henry, but I did just the same because you can't keep from falling in love any more than you can keep snow from falling from the sky in winter. Gravity is gravity.
”
― Binnie Kirshenbaum, The Scenic Route

“The moral of the story is this: sometimes, to do nothing, to do nothing at all, is the sorriest thing ever.”
― Binnie Kirshenbaum, The Scenic Route

“Lots of things should be, but aren't.”
― Binnie Kirshenbaum, The Scenic Route

“People who are not easy to like, they have feelings just like nice people do.”
― Binnie Kirshenbaum, Rabbits for Food

“And worse than the hurt of not being someone special is the shame of it, the shame of how much I want that, to be someone special.”
― Binnie Kirshenbaum, Rabbits for Food

“Sometimes late and never amount to the same thing. Sometimes, it has to be now or never.”
― Binnie Kirshenbaum, The Scenic Route

“Fun not shared is not fun. You can derive great pleasure alone, enjoy yourself enormously, experience bliss, but fun requires someone else, like a friend or a dog.”
― Binnie Kirshenbaum, Rabbits for Food

“A kind of happy that, if manifested into tangibility, would've taken the shape of a daisy.”
― Binnie Kirshenbaum, The Scenic Route

“When our surroundings are overwhelmingly depressing, how can we be anything but depressed?”
― Binnie Kirshenbaum, Rabbits for Food

“But there's always a choice. We make our choice, and then we put the blame on fate. ”
― Binnie Kirshenbaum, The Scenic Route

“Except, how do we go on when what was best is behind us? When the longing is not for someone you have not yet met, but for someone you knew and lost?”
― Binnie Kirshenbaum, The Scenic Route

“Some people don't like to remember," Vincent said. "Not even the good things?" "Especially not the good things.”
― Binnie Kirshenbaum, The Scenic Route

“In this way my mother fell short as a parent, which was something I had to learn to accept because it's how she was, and either you accept people as they are or you turn your back on them and walk away. Those are the choices: forbearance or flight, although that philosophy was slow in coming to me, and for many years, I expected more from people than they could give.”
― Binnie Kirshenbaum, The Scenic Route

“A token of love comes in a box because love itself cannot be contained.”
― Binnie Kirshenbaum, The Scenic Route

“People who are clinically depressed have their own disturbances with food. For some, it’s as if hand to mouth were an involuntary reflex, as if food could fill the abyss. Which it can’t, and they grow fat, which does nothing good for their state of mind. The others are rarely hungry or else they are never hungry. They emaciate, become insubstantial, a manifestation of the wish to disappear. Bunny is one of the thin ones.”
― Binnie Kirshenbaum, Rabbits for Food

“I might like to believe that every day, every hour, every minute of every hour of every day with Henry was *not* the happiest time I ever knew. I might like to believe that I am remembering it that way only because the happiest time ever makes it a better story. Because that's all you have left after people are gone from you, some things and some stories.”
― Binnie Kirshenbaum, The Scenic Route

“Henry told me he is often the life of the party, as if he didn't already know that to be the life of the party is the most sad and pathetic of all things to be.”
― Binnie Kirshenbaum, The Scenic Route

“That kind of empty; when hope is no longer deferred but evaporated, and try as you might, and you do try, you can't find the pleasure in the little things. A fine meal, good music, a breathtaking view of the landscape, the smell of the ocean, snow falling, it all adds up to a storehouse of memories and regrets, and you can't imagine there's a perchance left to be had. ”
― Binnie Kirshenbaum, The Scenic Route

“Semille wept not because she did something stupid; she wept because she *didn't* do something stupid. Sometimes, to do something stupid--to disobey your parents, to rush into battle, to speak out of turn, to ruin your life--is a far better thing to do than to do nothing at all.”
― Binnie Kirshenbaum, The Scenic Route

“I probably said something about being happy for him, because I was happy for him, although to be happy for someone else doesn't mean that you are happy for yourself.”
― Binnie Kirshenbaum, The Scenic Route

“A friend from work should be a compartmentalized and exclusive friendship; that is, my friend from work, as opposed to our friend from my work. Everyone should be free to go to lunch or dinner with a good friend from work without your significant other sitting there at the table letting go with bull-snort exhales of boredom laced with rising irritation while you and your friend are having what amounts to a private conversation about office intrigue.”
― Binnie Kirshenbaum, Rabbits for Food

“But surely he had told that story before. All of us, we tell our stories over and over again. Not in the same way and we don't always recognize them for what they are, the same way we don't always recognize that all creation myths boil down to God and man and a thunderstorm.”
― Binnie Kirshenbaum, The Scenic Route

“But there are no happy endings unless we cut the story short, and as far as I know, there are no rules of etiquette to a miracle, either.”
― Binnie Kirshenbaum, The Scenic Route

“Maybe it has something to do with the pull of the moon because, despite the statistical improbability of any two people meeting up, it is inevitable that the tremulous are drawn to the languished, the sick to the broken, the forsaken to the sad, every pot has its cover, and the funny to the funny ones, too.”
― Binnie Kirshenbaum, The Scenic Route

“Bunny does not want to kill herself. She does not want to die. It’s that she no longer wants to live. To not want to be alive is not the same thing as wanting to be dead.”
― Binnie Kirshenbaum, Rabbits for Food

“Anathem?”
― Binnie Kirshenbaum, Rabbits for Food