Julie Buxbaum > Quotes

“Just because you're strong doesn't mean you shouldn't ask for help sometimes. Remember that.”
― Julie Buxbaum, Tell Me Three Things

“I miss the way he used to kiss my shoulder whenever it was bare and he was nearby. I miss how he cleared his throat before he took a sip of water and scratched his left arm with his right hand when he was nervous. I miss how he tucked my hair behind my ear when it came loose and took my temperature when I was sick or when he was bored. I miss his glasses on my nightstand. I miss watching him take Sunday afternoon naps on my couch, with the newspaper resting on his stomach like a blanket. How his hands stayed clasped, fingers intertwined, while he slept. I miss the cadence of his speech and the stupidity of his puns. I miss playing doctor when we made love, and even when we didn't. I miss his smell, like fresh laundry and honey (because of his shampoo) at his place. Fresh laundry and coconut (because of my shampoo) at mine. I miss that he used to force me to listen to French rap and would sing along in a horrible accent. I miss that he always said "I love you" when he hung up the phone with his sister, never shy or embarassed, regardless of who else was around. I miss that his ideal Friday night included a DVD, eating Chinese food right out of the carton, and cuddling on top of my duvet cover. I miss that he reread books from his childhood and then from mine. I miss that he was the only man that I have ever farted on, and with, freely. I miss that he understood that the holidays were hard for me and that he wanted me to never feel lonely.”
― Julie Buxbaum, The Opposite of Love

“Perfect days are for people with small, realizable dreams. Or maybe for all of us, they just happen in retrospect; they're only now perfect because they contain something irrevocably and irretrievably lost.”
― Julie Buxbaum, Tell Me Three Things

“Other people can't make you feel stupid. Only you can.”
― Julie Buxbaum, Tell Me Three Things

“But sometimes a kiss is not a kiss is not a kiss. Sometimes it’s a poetry.”
― Julie Buxbaum, Tell Me Three Things

“One of the worst parts about someone dying is thinking back to all those times you didn’t ask the right questions, all those times you stupidly assumed you’d have all the time in the world. And this too: how all that time feels like not much time at all.”
― Julie Buxbaum, Tell Me Three Things

“Not knowing the right thing to do is not an excuse for not doing anything.”
― Julie Buxbaum, Tell Me Three Things

“He's more like me, I think: burdened with the realization that what goes on his mind is somehow different from what goes on everyone else's. Even those close to us. And how you can't think about that for too long, because that thought- the truth of your own isolation- is too much to bear.”
― Julie Buxbaum, Tell Me Three Things

“SN: you know what I think about sometimes?

Me: What?

SN: you know that piece of hair that always falls into your eyes—the not-quite-a-bang piece? I want to be able to tuck it behind your ear. I want to be able to do that. I want to meet you when I feel comfortable enough with you to do that.

Me: You are so weird.

SN: you are not the first person to say that.

Me: Am I the first to say that I really like that about you?”
― Julie Buxbaum, Tell Me Three Things

“Not feeling like I belong anywhere has made me crave constant motion; standing still feels risky, like asking to be a target.”
― Julie Buxbaum, Tell Me Three Things

“I don't even want to spend the rest of my life with me.. how do you explain to someone you love that you can't give yourself to them because if you did, you're not sure who you'd be giving? That you aren't sure what your own words are worth? You can't tell someone that, especially someone you love. And so you don't.

Instead, I do the right thing. I lie.”
― Julie Buxbaum, The Opposite of Love

“Wake up. This is your life, for God sakes. It's time to face up to it. You can't get anywhere, can't get over anything, if you don't let yourself feel anything in the first place. It's time.”
― Julie Buxbaum, The Opposite of Love

“There’s nothing lonelier than a hand on glass. Maybe because it’s so rarely reciprocated.”
― Julie Buxbaum, Tell Me Three Things

“My fear of saying something stupid often leaves me saying almost nothing at all.”
― Julie Buxbaum, Tell Me Three Things

“Though everyone I knew seemed to be either settling down or looking to settle down, I was never on a deep-sea fishing expedition to find a boyfriend. And a "great catch," well, that seemed to be begging for heartache.”
― Julie Buxbaum, The Opposite of Love

“I think of his hands fixing me a plate, almost touching my banged-up face, and all I can think about is how much I want to kiss them: his eyes, his hands too.
All of him.
His damaged parts.
All of him.”
― Julie Buxbaum, Tell Me Three Things

“And that's why I finally ended it. I realized today that it's exhausting to be a coward.”
― Julie Buxbaum, The Opposite of Love

“His two front teeth are slightly crooked, veer just a tiny bit to the right, as if they've decided perfection is overrated. His smile is like unlocking a riddle. How does an imperfection make him seem more perfect?”
― Julie Buxbaum, Tell Me Three Things

“That's the blessing and the curse of loss: You don't get to choose what falls within the inevitable dissolution of recollection or what lingers and haunts you late at night, your head heavy with memories, while your husband dreams of scaling walls in spandex tights.This is who I am: someone who simultaneously longs for and fears the commitment of remembering. There is the forgetting, the disintegration of memory, morsel by morsel; and there is the impossibility of forgetting, the scar tissue, with is insulated layers of padding. Both haunt me in their own way.”
― Julie Buxbaum, The Opposite of Love

“People like to say that the opposite of love is not hate but indifference. There tends to be a whispered reverence around the expression, as if it has magical healing powers. Better to be hated than ignored by that angry ex of yours; better to be hated than ignored, generally.

Otherwise, you may spend your life staring straight down the barrel of the opposite of love.

But I think that's bullshit. Nonsense print copy for a paper towel. A sound bit e to needlepoint on a throw pillow. Could indifference really be worse than hate? How depressing to think we could be spending most of our days surrounded by people who feel something worse than hate toward us.”
― Julie Buxbaum, The Opposite of Love

“The thing is, sometimes people grow from breaking.”
― Julie Buxbaum, What to Say Next

“A year later we were in a coffee shop, the kind taking a last stand against Starbucks with its thrift-store chairs, vegan cookies, and over-promising teas with names like Serenity and Inner Peace. I was curled up with a stack of causes, trying to get in a few extra hours of work over the weekend, and Andrew sat with one hand gripping his mug, his nose in The New York Times; the two of us a parody of the yuppie couple of the new millennium. We sat silently that way, though there wasn't silence at all. On top of the typical coffee-shop sounds - the whir of an expresso machine, the click of the cash register, the bell above the door - Andrew was making his noises, an occasional snort at something he read in the paper, the jangle of his keys in his pocket, a sniffle since he was getting over a cold, a clearing of his throat. And as we sat there, all I could do was listen to those Andrew-specific noises, the rhythm of his breath, the in-out in-out, its low whistle. Snort. Jangle. Sniffle. Clear.

Hypnotized. I wanted to buy his soundtrack.

This must be what love is, I thought. Not wanting his noises to ever stop.”
― Julie Buxbaum, The Opposite of Love

“You know how it is. Mean girls get mean in seventh grade and they stay that way until your ten-year reunion, when they want to be best friends again.”
― Julie Buxbaum, Tell Me Three Things

“They seem to understand that the world is a big, diverse place, and that different is not the same thing as scary. It’s amazing to me how many people mistake the two.”
― Julie Buxbaum, What to Say Next

“Here's what I know: I eat mass quantities of red meat, curse religiously, sing out of tune but with conviction. I cry when it suits me, laugh when it's inopportune, read The New York Times obituaries and wedding announcements, out loud and in that order.”
― Julie Buxbaum, The Opposite of Love

“I wish we could keep on forgetting to remember ourselves.”
― Julie Buxbaum, The Opposite of Love

“What if we all jumped out of our boxes and chewed up our stupid labels? Who would we discover?”
― Julie Buxbaum, What to Say Next

“My mom once told me that the world is divided into two kinds of people: the ones who love their high school years and the ones who spend the next decade recovering from them. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, she said.
But something did kill her, and I’m not stronger. So go figure; maybe there’s a third kind of person: the ones who never recover from high school at all.”
― Julie Buxbaum, Tell Me Three Things

“Maybe home doesn have to be a place.”
― Julie Buxbaum, Tell Me Three Things

“This is the opposite of love, I realize, when I look over and see my empty couch, see right through my imaginary companions. The opposite of love isn't hate; it isn't even indifference. It's fucking disembowelment. Hara-kiri. Taking a huge shovel and digging out your own heart, and your intestines, and leaving behind nothing. Nothing of yourself to give, nothing, even, to take away. Nothing but a quiet pulse and some mildly entertaining soap operas.

If to love is to hand over self and heart, then this, my friend, this - to self-disembowel - is its opposite.

I wish I knew how to needlepoint so I could stitch it onto a fucking pillow.”
― Julie Buxbaum, The Opposite of Love