Modern Romance Quotes

“Hi, Anya. Can I join you?"
Anya looked up from her meal with a dour expression. "I'm not a blond."
An obvious statement, it made no sense without a context. She added, "I'm not a twig."
"You're not a twig, that's also true." He gave her a smile, curious where this was going.”
― Dennis K. Hausker, Anya

“The world always said to just be yourself, but it turned out when Evelyn was herself, no guys were at all interested, so she was left with games of make-believe, expressing enthusiasm for whatever the men wanted to do, be it rock climbing or going to a cheese-beer pairing or a Knicks game.”
― Stephanie Clifford, Everybody Rise

“In my early twenties, I treated sex like a bartering system, trading giving for receiving, feeling victorious when I’d received more pleasure, and swindled when I’d given more. As I matured, sex became a bond that was only gratifying when both parties were equally satisfied.”
― Maggie Young

“I quickly found the dating/hookup app to be a dangerous addition to my iPhone. A friend recommended it after shit hit the fan with my boyfriend. With enough breakups under my belt, I knew that the healthiest remedy was a solid rebound fuck or two. Tinder made it easy- too easy. Suddenly, I could sit in traffic, on the toilet, or in line at the DMV and carelessly swipe, swipe, swipe my way to dick-on-delivery. Tinder selections are based on proximity via smart phones, so there are tons of tourists, travelers, and young professionals on business trips swiping through new hunting grounds. Its loose, easy-come-easy-go method made hookups as convenient as picking up lunch. Tinder’s nonchalance went both ways. We had nothing to lose.”
― Maggie Young

“This experiment has made it very clear that the majority of my day is spent on my phone or laptop, trying to figure out both where, and with whom, I am dining. And now, I'm reading my book on an iPad for an audio recording, so you, you lazy piece of shit, could listen to me, instead of reading the book yourself.”
― Aziz Ansari

“While we may think we know what we want, we’re often wrong".”
― Aziz Ansari, Modern Romance

“Seasoned digital daters are like lions who have had their prey killed, butchered, and served to them on a tray in their artificial habitat for so long that they’ve forgotten how to hunt.”
― Maggie Young

“That's the thing about the Internet: It doesn't simply help us find the best thing out there; it has helped to produce the idea that there is a best thing and, if we search hard enough, we can find it. And in turn there are a whole bunch of inferior things that we'd be foolish to choose.”
― Aziz Ansari, Modern Romance

“Deposit a million as a token of my love, darling."

"Go on, put your love on a pedestal and proclaim it loudly for the world to hear.”
― Samraat Singh

“Stop outsourcing your emotional fulfillment to a man exhibiting hot and cold behavior. The most powerful women in the dating world know that committing to a relationship is a liability, not an automatic benefit. They know choosing the wrong partner means wasting their time building up a toxic man only for him to go cosplay emotional maturity for someone else. Women with emotional mastery invest in themselves and don’t overexplain their high standards. They speak with their actions and detach.”
― Shahida Arabi, MA, Power: Surviving and Thriving After Narcissistic Abuse

“Honestly? I actually prefer to be a little intellectually intimidated by the women I love.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“I want her sharp. I want her cunning. I want to look at her across a room full of plastic smiles and hollow conversations and think: She is out of my league in ways I don't even understand yet.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“I want to engage in a conversation that feels like a knife fight in a phone booth, and if she can’t mentally back me into a corner and hold a blade to my throat, what are we even doing?”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“I want to look into her eyes and feel utterly, comprehensively outmatched.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“I am inside her head, but I am utterly incapable of being in her life. We are best friends in the gutter and total strangers in the light.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“What do you mean we never dated, and yet I am still not over you?”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“Every time you say 'yes' when you mean 'no,' you put a bullet in the head of the real you.

You’re stacking bodies in the basement,

The dreamer, the rebel, the romantic... you took them out back and shot them like Old Yeller because they were too loud for the dinner party.

Now you’re civilized. You’re polite. And you’re the only one left alive in a house full of ghosts.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“Some people don’t offer advice, they offer presence, and somehow that heals more.

The last thing you need is a lecture. I don't need a roadmap. I need a witness.

The friend who meets you at the bar at 2 AM and doesn't say a goddamn word about your mistakes.
Just slide a beer across the wood and sit there.

That’s the only medicine that works on a soul like mine.

Don't fix me. Just have a beer with me while I'm broken.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“How paradoxical of her to understand and misunderstand me at the same time. It drives me mad.

I am inside her head, but I am utterly incapable of being in her life.

We are best friends in the gutter and total strangers in the light.

It’s the closest I’ve ever been to anyone, honestly
I feel like I’m yelling at her from the moon.

Nobody has ever felt so close yet distant.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“The strangest, most heartbreaking part about nostalgia is that the moments that actually haunt you felt completely ordinary when you were living them.

It’s just driving to the grocery store with the windows down.

It’s her burning the toast on a Tuesday morning and laughing about it.

While you were living it, it was just another boring Tuesday. You had no idea that you were standing right in the middle of a masterpiece.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“You think intimacy is all bloody roses and holding hands in the park, do ya?

Bollocks!

You let a complicated, maddening woman into your life, and the next thing you know, your entire vocabulary is compromised.

Her cadence becomes your cadence.

It's the ultimate infiltration. Long after the meal is over, long after she is gone, you realize she has permanently altered change the way you speak. She's hijacked your syntax

But... you realize it's the only piece of 'her you've got left. And you wouldn't trade it for the world, would ya?”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“My love language is a a barrage of highly inappropriate dangerous questions.

I don't want the polite fiction of your day.

Because I am absolutely fascinated by the beautiful, tangled, chaotic mess inside your head.

I want to know what you think about at 3 AM when the world goes quiet and the anxiety creeps in.

So, Tell me about all the terrible, wonderful things you feel and never say out loud.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“So, somebody asked me the other day what’s my type is, right?

I actually prefer to be a little intellectually intimidated by the woman I love….

I want her sharp. I want her cunning. I want to look at her across the room and think, she is out of my league in ways I don't even understand yet.

I want to look into her eyes and feel utterly outmatched.

The kind of intellect that strips you bare, leaves you bleeding in the poetry of your own fucking ignorance.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”