Chloé Caldwell > Quotes

“Eventually it becomes obvious to me that I have stopped living and started killing time.”
― Chloe Caldwell, Women

“All I wanted was simple and yet the hardest thing to find: a sense of well-being.”
― Chloe Caldwell, I'll Tell You in Person

“I can accept that all I’ve ever wanted is not very special—all I’ve ever wanted, like most people, is proof of love.”
― Chloe Caldwell, Legs Get Led Astray

“In hindsight, I see it was my decision not to let go. I didn't know how, though some days I focused completely on it: using therapy, distraction, exercise. Other days I left myself wildly grieve. Finn affects it all: every conversation I have, what I choose to wear, what books I read, what films and shows I watch. There's that Buddhist quote, (S)he who angers you owns you. She owned me. I allowed it. She controlled me. I knew this feeling of misery would pass, that what I needed was time, but I was impatient. Unfortunately, we must live through the present to get to the future, writes Hanif Kureishi in his novel Intimacy.”
― Chloe Caldwell, Women

“I always want to feel good and I never want to feel bad. Because of this, I’m experienced in substance abuse issues.”
― Chloe Caldwell, Women

“I decide to hone my joy. I dance around the kitchen to Judy Garland’s Greatest Hits on the turntable. The sun on my chest, I spin in my socks. Bruised, exhausted, and fluttering back to earth.”
― Chloe Caldwell, Women

“I feel New York inside me when I talk too loudly, when I'm in line for coffee and feel rageful and restless, when I ask inappropriate and personal questions of strangers. When I say, 'Oh, I walked,' and people look at me quizzically and say, 'That's a long walk.”
― Chloe Caldwell, Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York

“I feel drawn to the word "unmoored" during this time. I look it up a few times a week. I stare at the definition on my computer screen. I love the example sentence Wikipedia uses, which says, Left unmoored, the boat gradually drifts out to sea. It pops into my head when I wake in the mornings, while I walk the streets, wait for the bus, the train, get into cabs, eat lunch alone, and browse the shelves at the library.”
― Chloe Caldwell, Women

“Things hurt worse before they hurt better.”
― Chloe Caldwell, Women

“what feels like nectar in the beginning turns into poison in the long run, and what feels like poison in the beginning is nectar in the end.”
― Chloe Caldwell, I'll Tell You in Person

“All you need is one person in the world to condone your horrifying behavior, and to each other, we were that one special person.”
― Chloe Caldwell, I'll Tell You in Person

“My mother wanted to be Betty Boop. Betty Boop was independent. Betty Boop was sexy. Betty Boop really had her shit together, you know?”
― Chloe Caldwell, Legs Get Led Astray

“What I know: When I met you, a blue rush began. We treat desire as a problem to be solved. We fucked for six straight hours that afternoon, which does not seem precisely possible but that is what the clock said. We killed the time. To read is to cover one’s face, to write is to show it. Are there many things in this cool-hearted world so utterly exquisite as the pure love of one woman for another woman?”
― Chloe Caldwell, Women

“I get drunk and high like in high school. I smoke weed out of a can, I drink wine out of a box. I used to be more hardcore in my self-destruction, but I am back to basics now.”
― Chloe Caldwell, Women

“In Buddhism, the term hungry ghost refers to the person whose appetite exceeds their capacity for satisfaction.”
― Chloe Caldwell, I'll Tell You in Person

“In the book The Fantasy Bond, Robert Firestone explains that children need to believe their parents are good, that everything is well and loving, because if they see the truth, they will crumble in the face of reality. It’s odd my mother would say something that profound because of a CoverGirl blush. Even now, it embarrasses me to think about—that she nailed me so hard.”
― Chloe Caldwell, I'll Tell You in Person

“And do you agree that the mornings when we appreciated each other might have been better than the mornings we loved each other?”
― Chloe Caldwell, Legs Get Led Astray

“She looks at me looking at her, and says, In my wildest dreams, I never thought you would look at me that way.”
― Chloe Caldwell, Women

“In Buddhism, the term hungry ghost refers to the person whose appetite exceeds their capacity for satisfaction. The visual of a hungry ghost is a Buddha-ghost with a tiny mouth and an enormous stomach. They’re greedy, starved for money, sex, drugs, power, status, all the good stuff. More is never enough.”
― Chloe Caldwell, I'll Tell You in Person

“I Don’t Do Drugs I Am Drugs”
― Chloe Caldwell, Women

“I used to think that every eventful thing that happened in my life would feel as good as moving to New York City did, that my life would be like moving to New York, over and over and over again. I know now that as with falling in love, you’re lucky if it happens to you even once.”
― Chloe Caldwell, Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York

“By summer I have stopped communicating with Finn. My life expands
without her in it. My head begins to clear. The sun is magnificent; it wakes
me early, and in the sun, I change. I am light and energetic. My days are
spent in my backyard reading books of nonfiction. I find solace in
devastating memoirs (miscarriages, natural disasters, death, and addiction).
When I tell people what I’m reading, people who read fiction and not
memoirs, they’re usually appalled at the storyline. How is that fun for you?
they ask. I read for hours, drinking coffee and eating toast and sweating
from the brilliant sun.”
― Chloé Caldwell, Women

“The way her beginning is her ending and her ending is her beginning.”
― Chloe Caldwell, I'll Tell You in Person

“To read is to cover one’s face, to write is to show it.”
― Chloé Caldwell, Women

“Never say very if you're tempted to say very then say damn.”
― Chloe Caldwell, Women

“I am facing the wall. I say, “I need to change the way I live my life”. She says yeah, or she says nothing. I do not remember.”
― Chloe Caldwell, Women

“I become familiar with cold hard grounds. On a Friday night, I drink three too many glasses of wine and I call Finn. She makes no black humor jokes. It is not an erotic mess anymore, like Sabine once told me it was. The conflict and torture is not a sign of intelligence anymore, as Finn once told me it was. It is ugly. We are exhausted. Gutted. You're too hard! she yells at me. Be soft, she orders. I'm confused, I tell her. I don't know what to grieve. I can't be in a relationship with anyone, she says, so if you have to grieve something, grieve that. She says this strongly. She means it. When we get off the phone I am in fetal position on the bathroom floor, holding my heart, while it literally aches.”
― Chloe Caldwell, Women

“I used to think that every eventful thing that happened in my life would feel as good as moving to New York City did, that my life would be like moving to New York, over and over and over again. I know now that as with falling in love, you're lucky if it happens to you even once.”
― Chloe Caldwell, Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York

“And I was using shortcuts. It fucking sucks to take the long way after knowing the shortcuts. There”
― Chloe Caldwell, I'll Tell You in Person

“Trust me, I hate myself more than you ever can. And I know it’s me that I hate. I know it’s me who has chosen this.”
― Chloé Caldwell, Women