Melissa Bank Quotes & Sayings

Jack knew how to make women fall in love with him, but that didn't exactly qualify him as a guidance counselor. — Melissa Bank

They were a couple in a way that didn't exclude anyone but seemed superior to every other relationship in the room. — Melissa Bank

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

Basically, all anyone has to do is ask me for fun details or tell me to be creative, and my mind turns to mud. I am instantly the most boring person you've ever met. — Melissa Bank

I said, "Is my father dying?"
He looked at me steadily. "We're all dying, Jane. — Melissa Bank

He was some sort of boxing champion," she told me the night she took me out to celebrate my graduation. "He was always punching someone in the nose."
"Macho," I said.
"No," she said. "It was the clarity of expression that appealed to him. — Melissa Bank

By late August, I'm on my second sublet, and I've been working as a copywriter long enough to know I'm not good at it. I seem to be reliving the life I had when I was twenty-two, but I'm about to run twenty-eight, which feels like the opposite of twenty-two. — Melissa Bank

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

Once when I visited her, she scuffed around the house in pink pile-lined slippers you'd wear only while waiting for the police to discover you many days dead. — Melissa Bank

When I sit down to write, I don't have any real goals except to follow one good sentence with another ... I'm not the kind of writer who has a map. — Melissa Bank

When he takes off his shirt, I see that his shoulders are narrow and his chest almost hairless and almost concave. For a second I'm disappointed but right away I think, Grow up; this is the chest of a husband. — Melissa Bank

Well, for one thing," she said, "her knowledge of punctuation begins and ends with her own beauty mark. — Melissa Bank

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

You act like I just want to sleep with you ...
I want to EVERYTHING with you. — Melissa Bank

I hate weddings,' she says. 'They make me feel so unmarried. Actually, even brushing my teeth makes me feel unmarried. — Melissa Bank

Even a perfect understanding of failed love is the booby prize. — Melissa Bank

He didn't remember because he'd seen thousands of little fish hundreds of times, and because it didn't mean to him what it had to me. — Melissa Bank

She looked like someone who was used to having other people wait on her. I wonder what that's like, to never have to worry about filling the silence. — Melissa Bank

The elevator door opens right into the loft. I was counting on those extra few seconds of hallway before facing the party, the party we are now part of and in, a party with people talking and laughing and having a party time. I think, I am a solid, trying to do a liquid's job. — Melissa Bank

I'd already figured out that not understanding my failings was another one of my failings. — Melissa Bank

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

We change into our bathing suits, both of us pale like larvae, and then we walk down to the water. — Melissa Bank

Up until that moment, I'd been at the earliest stage of love, when you feel it will turn you into the better person you want to be. Now, his gentle voice and sage advice took me to a later stage: I felt I needed to pretend to be a better person than I was so he'd keep loving me. This was hard because it made me hate him. — Melissa Bank

You try to plan your life, but that's not how it works. — Melissa Bank

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

You're correcting my grammar now?
Yes, I'm helping you to be better. And I expect the same from you.
What if I don't want to be better?'
Then you'll be just a petulant, infinitive-splitting eavesdropper. — Melissa Bank

I never expected anyone in my family to change, and especially not my father, who changed first and most profoundly: He died. — Melissa Bank

Bored .... nearly to death — Melissa Bank

He never told me that he loved me."
"Some men don't," she says. "Some men say it all the time and don't mean it."
I recognize myself in the latter category, not with Demetri but with one of his predecessors. I sometimes said "I love you" to Josh because I was afraid I didn't; toward the end, I hardly said it at all, and when I did I meant, I WISH I LOVED YOU. — Melissa Bank

He tried to smile, but it was just a shape his mouth made. — 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

He tells me that he knows Max from freshman year - roughly twenty years - and I remember that a huge number of Oberlin friends are here and ask what bonds them all for life.
He says "No one else will be friends with us. — Melissa Bank

He could do whatever he wanted. My father was the same way: a houseful of guests, and my mother's duty was to provide food, drink, fun, and conversation, while my father's was to nap or read. — Melissa Bank

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. — Melissa Bank

It's perfectly natural to doubt your judgment about doubting your judgment. — Melissa Bank

I want him to tell my why, but he doesn't say anything. It seems possible that Matthew is gay and possible that he isn't; possible that he is just a little more afraid than the rest of us and possible that he is much more; it even seems possible that what he has with Dena is bigger or deeper or more important than anything else is to him.
I don't know, But i no longer believe, as I did that last afternoon at the lake, that my many, many flaws are what prevented Matthew from wanting a life with me. It seems more likely that it is his flaw that he can't or won't love anyone
and that he is indiscriminate in his unlove. — Melissa Bank

It scares me how fast I go from disliking to loving him, and I wonder if it's this way for everyone. — Melissa Bank

Later, lying in bed, I wonder if Dena knows about her father. I decide that she probably does, and I imagine how I would feel if I knew that my father was unfaithful to my mother.
Then I remember Richard, and I think that marriage might not mean much to Dena. I can't really blame her: She learned about marriage from her parents, just as I did from mine. For all I know, sleeping with Richard is just Dena's way of trying not to be her mother. — Melissa Bank

He's losing weight," I say. "He doesn't sleep anymore." It occurs to me that this is how cults weaken the will of initiates.
Robert says, "It sounds to me like he's in love," and adds that the world's most coveted state is characterized by unrelieved insecurity and almost constant pain. — Melissa Bank

He said, People wait their whole lives for the kind of happiness we have. — Melissa Bank

Archie asked me if I knew Dante's definition of hell..."Proximity without intimacy," he said. — Melissa Bank

It was the opposite of love, and yet it wasn't love I was opposed to but the murmurs that said, This is your chance, which seemed less like the promise of a door opening than the threat of one sealing shut. — Melissa Bank

Something changed then. I saw my life in scale: it was just my life. It was not momentous, and only now did I recognize that it had once seemed so to me; that was while my father was watching.
I saw myself the way I'd seen the cleaning women in the building across the street. I was just one person in one window.
Nobody was watching, except me. — Melissa Bank

Oliver Biddle was who you became if you couldn't find anyone to love except your parents. — Melissa Bank

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

He tells me that the best man I will ever find will be attracted to other women. I hear this as another fact I am too old not to know. More proof of how unprepared I am to love anyone. — Melissa Bank

As ever, Sue was on the phone, and I could tell by her posture - she was half laying on the desk - that she was crying. I knew this was no distress but joy: She always cried when her boyfriend admitted that he was a complete idiot. — Melissa Bank

It scares me. But then I get this big feeling, simple but exalted: He's like me, just with different details. — Melissa Bank

when i felt bobby staring at me, i looked up. our eyes met, and he held my gaze; he held my gaze like he was holding me, and i held him as though holding him. then he looked away, he was gone and it was over - a one-minute stand. — Melissa Bank

I said, "What's your goal in life?" and winced at how corny and earnest I sounded.
He looked away. He thought. "I guess I'm trying to become a better man than the one I'm hardwired to be. — Melissa Bank

While home is the place where you can relax and be yourself, this doesn't mean that you can take advantage of the love and affection other members of your family have for you. — Melissa Bank

Henry unpacked the car and loaded himself up with everything they'd brought, little bags and big ones, a string tote, a knapsack.
As he started up the driveway, his girlfriend said, "Do you have the wine, Hank?"
Whoever Hank was, he had it. — Melissa Bank

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

Good'?" my aunt said. "Children are good. Dogs are good. This is theater, Jane. — Melissa Bank

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

Until that moment, it hadn't occurred to me that my grades and test scores over the years were anything more than individual humiliations; I hadn't realized that one day all of them would add up and count against me. — Melissa Bank

You see yourself through his eyes, as The Generic Woman, the skirted symbol of the ladies room door. — Melissa Bank

Unfortunately, we all had to face that I was not the person they wanted me to be. — Melissa Bank

I remembered my father's speech about what Jack was capable of and wasn't; he'd said, IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH HOW MUCH JACK LOVES YOU. I thought about all the girls he'd stopped loving; it was like he had a timer, and at a certain point it buzzed. — Melissa Bank

During chemo, you're more tired than you've ever been. It's like a cloud passing over the sun, and suddenly you're out. But you also find that you're stronger than you've ever been. You're clear. Your mortality is at optimal distance, not up so close that it obscures everything else, but close enough to give you depth perception. Previously, it has taken you weeks, months, or years to discover the meaning of an experience. Now it's instantaneous. — Melissa Bank

We are all children until our fathers die. — Melissa Bank

He wants me to boss you around."
"We'll pick up a pair of stilettos on the way home," he said.
I said, "I need to go back to Philiadelphia. — Melissa Bank

When I could talk, I said, "I don't know what I did wrong."
Dena sighed, "You care too much. — Melissa Bank

It's all about judging," I said. "I'm not sure I'm the judge type. I might be more of the criminal type."
"Judgement is power," he said. — Melissa Bank

It isn't you,' he says, as though you're to be comforted by the irrelevant role you play in your own life. — Melissa Bank

I tried to go back and talk about what I did know. I told her about one girl he'd brought home from Cornell; I'd asked if she was his girlfriend, and he's said, When you define something, you limit it. — Melissa Bank

Well," I said, "I have to go."
He said, "Can I call you?"
I waited a long time before answering, though not, of course, as long as he'd made me wait. I let him stand there with the question in the air while I took a good long look at him, let him stand there while I stepped to the street and raised my arm for a cab. At exactly that moment, as though dispatched by some god I didn't really believe in anymore - the god of drama or god of perfect things - or maybe by my own fairy god god, a cab came. I got in, and closed the door. — Melissa Bank

The writing is clean. I really wouldn't have changed a word. Most of it is true, too, except that the hero quits drinking and the girl grows up. On the last page, the couple gets married, which is a nice way for a love story to end. — Melissa Bank

The women are young, young, young, liquidy and sweet-looking; they are batter, and I am the sponge cake they don't know they'll become. I stand here, a lone loaf, stuck to the pan. — Melissa Bank

Archie asked if I'd told my parents about him, and I said I hadn't. "How much longer are you going to keep me in the closet?" he said. "It's dark in here. And I keep stepping on your shoes. — Melissa Bank

He loves New York, he says. 'It's like Oberlin
it's where people who don't belong anywhere belong. — Melissa Bank

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

There are things that two people say in the middle of the night That don't make sense to a third at breakfast. — Melissa Bank

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

I live by Edith Wharton's rule to get rid of anything neither useful nor beautiful. So I put the TV out on the street. — Melissa Bank

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

It might sound ordinary for a woman to find out her husband's cheating on her, but not if you're the woman and it's your husband. — Melissa Bank

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

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

Time. There seems to be vast quantities of the stuff spooling around me in all directions, everywhere i look. Days and hours. Weeks and minutes. Years. The hard part, ive discovered, is filling it. — Melissa Bank

I feel in some ways I've had a difficult life. And it makes me the kind of writer I am, in what I value, what I respect, what I hold dear. — Melissa Bank

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

He went to the bar and stood there a while. But he was in the way of people getting their drinks. He moved to the edge of the crowd and just watched. Suddenly it seemed, he was drunk, in a suit that didn't fit, at a party where he didn't know anyone, and he was standing alone. — Melissa Bank

The only relationships I haven't wrecked right away were the ones that wrecked me later. — Melissa Bank

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

I guess love is the real suspension of disbelief. — Melissa Bank

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

'Olive Kitteridge' is a masterpiece: The writing is so perfect you don't even notice it; the story is so vivid it's less like reading a story than experiencing it firsthand. — Melissa Bank

Sometimes you're loved because of your weaknesses. What you can't do is sometimes more compelling than what you can. — Melissa Bank

Happiness is a dog sunning itself on a rock. We were not put on this Earth to be happy. We were put here to experience great things. — Melissa Bank

I tried to avoid Mimi. Her presence seemed to call forth every rejection I'd ever experienced
the teachers who'd looked at me as though I held no promise, the boys who didn't like me back. Around her, I became fourteen again. — Melissa Bank

I have acute pancreatitis."
"I thought it was just average looking. — Melissa Bank

In a cab home from a jazz club, he said, "You act like I just want to sleep with you." He said, "I want to everything with you. — Melissa Bank

You have to shrink yourself to fit into this little life with him. — Melissa Bank

I saw my life in scale: it was just my life. It was not momentous, and only now did I recognize that it had once seemed so to me; that was while my father was watching. — Melissa Bank

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

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

You realize that if he doesn't know who you are, he won't be able to remember who you were. — Melissa Bank

I realized I was waiting for his permission to leave — Melissa Bank

Before college, I hadn't voluntarily read anything that might be called literature; I didn't think I'd understand it; I never seemed to understand my English teacher's interpretations of what we read. — Melissa Bank