Quotes from Galt Niederhoffer

She was not brokenhearted because the relationship had ended suddenly; she was brokenhearted because it had never truly ended.

The map was just an accessory. She knew exactly where she was.

There was something horribly depressing, she felt, about watching the weather report. That life could be planned like the perfect summer picnic drained it of spontaneity.

Technically, on the spectrum of very bad things, they did nothing truly wicked. But of course, that spectrum has no measure for the greatest of all carnal sins, the kind that occurs before skin touches skin, before wondering turns to yearning, yearning to having, having to holding for dear life, when two people cling to each other so desperately that even when they lie, inches apart, neither is fully satisfied until the light between them turns to darkness.

She was not brokenhearted because the relationship had ended suddenly; she was brokenhearted because it had never truly ended.

Time passed at an accelerated pace. They could be sitting in traffic or talking on the phone or waiting in line for a movie, and their time felt precious, important, worthwhile.

Was it possible there was some fatal flaw in their matching, that they were ultimately, impossibly different--dissimilar enough to fall in love, but too fundamentally distinct to stay together?

Not to speak would have infused the moment with more meaning than it deserved.

Physical attraction did its part to glue them together, but something stronger than sexual attraction sealed the bond. When men and women grow apart, it is for the same reason they are drawn together; because they are finally, inherently too different. Friendships among women, on the other hand, were burdened by similarity.

And she had been in love enough times to rule out the possibility that this was merely some feat of nostalgia.

The sound of his voice was an overwhelming relief, like remembering the name of a beloved song or returning to a childhood haunt to find it totally unchanged. Did he not fee the same swell of relief? Or was he just better at hiding it?

Love and hysteria are easily mistaken.

If anything was, that the world will always--it can only--disappoint.

Betrayal lived in a separate realm than sex, a realm that was far more innocent, and far more erotic.

We live in a world that hates women so much that they would sooner blame a woman for reporting a crime than punish a man for committing it.

Occasionally, she wondered if all couples struggled so much to understand one another, spoke so little at dinner together, spent so much time camped out in front of the TV. Did all women sometimes feel distanced from their man while they were making love?

He began to view writing as a petty ambition, a frivolous and indulgent whim, creativity itself as the pathology of the very young or very stupid.

The state of being lost, he seemed to imply, granted him a kind of freedom.

I don't think I have some special gift for knowing what's in your heart. I think we both do.

But as always, the distance between them gave way to a need to be closer.

There was no one--nothing else in the world--that had this unbelievable effect on him: thrilling electrification. But just as soon as he acknowledged this gift, he sought to destroy it.

Their looks and personalities were still intact, but some thing had atrophied ever so slightly. Their faces bore the distinct wear of goals gone too long unfulfilled.

Rivalry glued the girls together in a way that regular contact could not.

If something terrible happens to me, it's not my job to spare you from my pain.