Paul Rudnick > Quotes

“As a writer, I need an enormous amount of time alone. Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials. It's a matter of doing everything you can to avoid writing, until it is about four in the morning and you reach the point where you have to write. Having anybody watching that or attempting to share it with me would be grisly.”
― Paul Rudnick

“Wait, we can not break bread with you. You have taken the land which is rightfully ours. Years from now my people will be forced to live in mobile homes on reservations. Your people will wear cardigans, and drink highballs. We will sell our bracelets by the road sides, and you will play golf, and eat hot h'ors d'ourves. My people will have pain and degradation. Your people will have stick shifts. The gods of my tribe have spoken. They said do not trust the pilgrims, especially Sarah Miller. And for all of these reasons I have decided to scalp you and burn your village to the ground.”
― Paul Rudnick

“Dysmorphia is when someone looks in the mirror, and sees something else. While I studied my own whatever I was, I decided that maybe everyone has at least a touch of dysmorphia; maybe it's impossible for anyone to ever truly know what they look like.”
― Paul Rudnick, Gorgeous

“wait," I said. "so you're saying that you proposed to me because I'm a mess and I'm a person and because we need each other, while Rebecca was —— something else? I get it, I follow you, but I'm also thinking, is the bullshit getting a little deep in here?"
"Yes, it is. You've caught me. And so fine, I will come clean, and I will tell you the absolutely true and naked reason why I want to marry you and only you, and not Rebecca."
"Why?"
"Because when I'm with you, I'm the pretty one.”
― Paul Rudnick, Gorgeous

“Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials. It's a matter of doing everything you can to avoid writing, until it is about four in the morning and you reach the point where you have to write.”
― Paul Rudnick

“Rocher was on the floor, crawling on her stomach toward Jate's feet. "I love you...," she kept repeating, in a demonic whisper. "I have to show you... my butt.”
― Paul Rudnick, Gorgeous

“Because there’s a clock attached to every beautiful woman. From the second she comes into her own, she begins to decline, because she begins to age. Aging is every beautiful woman’s kryptonite. And so, yes, it’s ridiculous and no, you don’t have much time and of course it’s not fair. Those three statements are the essence of beauty.”
― Paul Rudnick, Gorgeous

“And when I'm feeling glum, because Gregory's away of because my daughter's just hurled her full glass of milk at my head, or just because time is passing, I like to scroll through the annual East Trawley High School online newsletter, which gets mass-emailed by Shanice Morain, who's on her second marriage and who cohosts her own Christian Soul-Support and Teen Prayer Variety Hour on local TV and who's just been appointed our class secretary. In the current Alumni Notes section I read that Katelynn Streedmore has just been named the head dietitian at the Jamesburg Assisted Care Facility, that Cal Malstrup and his wife Chelsea Marie have just welcomed their fifth bundle of joy, whom they've christened Blake-Jorlinda Malstrup, and that Becky Randle is still the Queen of England.”
― Paul Rudnick, Gorgeous

“Nightlife is not for sissies, except of course for career sissies; an evening out requires at least a full day of minute preparation. . . . People move to New York to invent themselves, and nightclubs provide a runway for the results. It’s easy to spend twenty hours per day slaving in a Pennsylvania coal mine or threshing some Nebraska oat crop; going out in New York is work.”
― Paul Rudnick, Social Disease

“I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there’s something quite different about you, from the last time we were together, what could it be….”
Was this my ultra-dose of Intoxicated taking effect?
“I know!” said the prince happily. “You’re a national disgrace!”
“And do you know what else is interesting,” I replied. “In America, Prince is a dog’s name.”
― Paul Rudnick, Gorgeous

“I’m glad you’re gay,” she said solemnly, “because that way, if I can’t have you, no one can.”
“Um, Rocher,” I mentioned, “like, a dude could have him.”
This had never occurred to Rocher because she’d thought that Jate being gay translated as, “I love Rocher Bargemueller so much but I don’t deserve her so I’ll never have sex again.” The concept of Jate with a guy was fresh turf and Rocher regarded him with an especially deranged sparkle in her eyes.
“I could be a dude,” she said.”
― Paul Rudnick, Gorgeous

“Venice was luscious. She had real curves and real cleavage. She had a stunning face, set off by a broad, lascivious grin. She had an indefinable hairstyle, a swag of thick blond dazzle that seemed always in motion, falling in her eyes, getting caught in her mouth. Venice spoke in a husky growl, with a deep, filthy laugh.
Venice was no stranger to flirtation; she was practically no stranger to anyone. She smoldered, even at breakfast. Venice—at times literally—enjoyed a love affair with Manhattan.”
― Paul Rudnick, Social Disease

“My compulsive thoughts aren't even thoughts, they're absolute certainties and obeying them isn't a choice.”
― Paul rudnick

“Guy cradled his tux, stroking it, running his fingers incestuously over the satin stripe on the trousers. There is a satisfaction that only superb clothing can offer, the joy of man raising himself from the mud, vindicating evolution. Life cannot lack purpose if a tuxedo exists—this is the obvious reply to the Samuel Beckett canon.”
― Paul Rudnick, Social Disease

“I'm here," I continued, "to guide you into the light of truth, decency and perhaps pants.”
― Paul Rudnick, It's All Your Fault

“And so I continue in borderline poverty, save for my one indulgence, no, my single absolute necessity: I take cabs. Yes, on occasion, when I wish to see what people with unpleasant skin conditions are wearing, I do take the subway. I have never, I am proud to say, taken the bus, because people who take the bus have given up.”
― Paul Rudnick, I Shudder and Other Reactions to Life, Death, and New Jersey

“I believe in a benevolent God not because He created the Grand Canyon or Michelangelo, but because He gave us snacks.”
― Paul Rudnick, I Shudder and Other Reactions to Life, Death, and New Jersey

“No one under the age of eighteen needs a cell phone unless they're a surgeon, a drug dealer, or a prostitute.”
― Paul Rudnick, It's All Your Fault

“Fine, I’ll admit it, I’ve read all of the books in the trilogy, which have sold more copies than there are people in the world because a lot of girls have hoarded multiple copies of each book and hidden the backup copies under their beds or in their lockers or in hollow trees, in case there’s a nuclear holocaust.”
― Paul Rudnick, It's All Your Fault

“Oh my God. I love rich people. And royalty are the best because they’re rich people who can’t be fires.”
― Paul Rudnick

“Whenever I stumble over my own feet, or blurt out a thought that makes no sense at all, or leave the house wearing one pattern too many, I always think, It's okay, I'm from New Jersey. I love New Jersey, because it's not just an all-purpose punch line, but probably a handy legal defense, as in, "Yes, I shot my wife because I thought she was Bigfoot, but I'm from New Jersey.”
― Paul Rudnick

“Catey, you were so on it,” said Sophie. “You just stood there and you looked around and you saw this convertible. You pointed at it and you said, ‘The Lord provides.’ ”
― Paul Rudnick, It's All Your Fault

“State your name.”
“Venice Huber.”
“Occupation?”
“Well, it’s hard to say. I don’t model, land of the seventeen bimbos. I don’t act—after all, isn’t an actress just a model who won’t shut up? Let’s say, oh—homemaker. Could you die?”
― Paul Rudnick, Social Disease

“I was determined to think about nothing, which never works, because a blank mind is an invitation to truth.”
― Paul Rudnick

“I am not!” said the guy’s girlfriend, who was wearing a very short skirt, very high heels and the kind of complicated hairstyle that looks like it needs blueprints and a construction crew.”
― Paul Rudnick, It's All Your Fault

“There was a cable-TV program that documented how Peeps are made, and it showed unlimited hordes of Peeps bouncing merrily down a conveyor belt, right toward the camera. I came.”
― Paul Rudnick, I Shudder and Other Reactions to Life, Death, and New Jersey

“Sometimes I think that we should send all of the Killer Mediums to Afghanistan because al-Qaeda wouldn’t stand a chance.”
― Paul Rudnick, It's All Your Fault

“Just from Farrell stalking away I was absorbing so much, including the fact that at any given moment in history, and excluding nurses and brides, there are only at most three people on the planet who can get away with wearing all white, and Farrell was at least two of them.”
― Paul Rudnick, Farrell Covington and the Limits of Style

“When I was laughing I couldn't tell if I was pretty or not, but I looked happy.”
― Paul Rudnick, Gorgeous

“Darling, my darling-- have you ever been to a picnic? And someone blows up a balloon, and everyone starts tossing it around? And the balloon drifts and it catches the light, and it's always just about to touch the ground, but someone always gets there just in time, to tap it back up. That balloon-- that's God. The very best in all of us.”
― Paul Rudnick, Jeffrey