Melissa Bank > Quotes

“I felt I couldn't lose anything else, but just then I realized I already had: I'd lost the hope that I would ever be loved in just that way again.”
― Melissa Bank, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing

“We are all children until our fathers die.”
― Melissa Bank, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing

“You will say good-bye for all the right reasons. You're tired of living in wait for his apocalypse. You have your own fight on your hands, and though it's no bigger or more noble than his, it will require all of your energy.

It's you who has to hold on to earth. You have to tighten your grip -- which means letting go of him.”
― Melissa Bank, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing

“Sometimes you’re loved because of your weaknesses. What you can’t do is sometimes more compelling than what you can.”
― Melissa Bank, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing

“You don't need a reason to forgive... If you want to go on with someone, that is what you do. ”
― Melissa Bank

“The only relationships I haven't wrecked right away were the ones that wrecked me later.”
― Melissa Bank, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing

“You can feel that he wants to own you - not like an object but like a good dream he wants to keep having. He lets you know that you already own him.”
― Melissa Bank, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing

“You sense that he's dangerous but don't now why - and wonder if it's because he makes you feel safer than you've ever felt. ”
― Melissa Bank, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing

“Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.”
― Melissa Bank, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing

“He tried to smile, but it was just a shape his mouth made.”
― Melissa Bank, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing

“I guess love is the real suspension of disbelief.”
― Melissa Bank, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing

“You smell like a bar," he said.
I thought, You smell like a library. But I wanted to have sex right then, so I said, "You smell like a poem.”
― Melissa Bank, The Wonder Spot

“Nice,' I say, realizing only afterward that I've mimicked her, a bad habit of mine; I'm like one of those animals that imitates its predators to survive.”
― Melissa Bank, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing

“But then you hear that he can't hear you, you see that he can't see you. You are not here--and you haven't even died yet. You see yourself through his eyes, as The Generic Woman, the skirted symbol on the ladies' room door.”
― Melissa Bank, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing

“Dante's definition of hell: proximity without intimacy. From the Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing”
― Melissa Bank

“My theory was that if you had breasts, boys wanted to have sex with you, which wasn't exactly a big compliment, since they wanted to have sex any way. Whereas if you had a beautiful face, like Julia, boys fell in love with you, which seemed to happen against their will. Then the sex that you had would be about love.”
― Melissa Bank, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing

“It scares me how fast I go from disliking to loving him, and I wonder if it’s this way for everyone.”
― Melissa Bank, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing

“You can feel like he wants to own you,-not like an object but like a good dream he wants to keep having.”
― Melissa Bank

“In the cab to the station, he told me that when he was growing up he'd see a look of pleasure cross his mother's face and ask what she was thinking: she'd say, I was just thinking of your father. "That's how I want us to be," Archie said.
I smiled.
"What?"
I said, "I was just thinking of your father.”
― Melissa Banks, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing

“Finally, I asked how you got a boy to like you back. She said, 'Just be yourself,' as though I had any idea who that might be.”
― Melissa Bank, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing

“i realize i will never hear from dena again, and i will never call her. it gives me a chill. it is a strange thing to end a friendship, even if you know it's what you want. it's like a death; all of a sudden your experience of a person become finite. ”
― Melissa Bank, The Wonder Spot

“You did the best you could," and she seemed to believe I had.

I said, "I've just been going through the motions," using the expression my father had after he'd watched my first tennis lesson.

"Sweetie," she said, "that's what a lot of life is.”
― Melissa Bank, The Wonder Spot

“I hate weddings,' she says. 'They make me feel so unmarried. Actually, even brushing my teeth makes me feel unmarried.”
― Melissa Bank, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing

“You don't see him again. Sometimes you worry that he loved you better than any man ever has or will--even if it had nothing to do with you. Even now, he is every blue blazer getting into a cab, every runner along the river, every motorcycle coming and going.”
― Melissa Bank, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing

“He gives me a kiss that barely touches my lips – it means nothing or everything.
After he’s gone, I think, Happy birthday to me.
Jack says, ‘That was the guy?’
‘That was him.’
Jake shakes his head.
‘What?’
‘He’s not for you,’ he says.
I say, ‘How do you know?’ but what I mean is, How do you know?
‘He’s like Ashley Wilkes,’ he says. ‘Any one of these guys is Rhett-ier than he is.’
Again, I ask my benignly inflected, ‘How do you know?’
‘How do I know?’ he says, tackling me into a bear hug. ‘How do I know? I know, that’s how I know.”
― Melissa Bank, The Wonder Spot

“He said, "People wait their whole lives for the kind of happiness we have.”
― Melissa Bank, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing

“I said, "It's not like that." I wanted to convince her. I said "We think alike."

Oh, my dear," she said. "A man thinks with his dick.”
― Melissa Bank, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing

“He gazed at me. "You've grown up honey." It felt good to hear it. I thought maybe he was right. Then it occurred to me that if I really had grown up I wouldn't want to be told.”
― Melissa Bank, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing

“Everywhere you go, you see women more beautiful than yourself.

You imagine him being attracted to them.

You're drinking gasoline to stay warm.”
― Melissa Bank, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing

“With so much sky and so much river, you couldn't help seeing the big picture. It was what you already knew, but crowding into the subway or rushing to a movie, you only saw it for a second, and close up. Now I took a good long look. I'd always heard you couldn't see stars in Manhattan because of all the lights. But here they all were. Here was my night in shining armor.”
― Melissa Bank, The Wonder Spot