Quotes from Melissa Bank

No, he said, and he snapped his fingers. You'll come work for me at K----. And be a real associate editor. I said, I could bring you up on charges for that. What? Work harassment in the sexual place.

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.

Today was the first day of the rest of my life. It was okay, I think the second day of the rest of my life will be better

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.

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

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.

Even now, he is every blue blazer getting into cab, every runner along the river,every motorcycle coming and going.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

It occurred to me that the quiet in the suburbs had nothing to do with peace.

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.

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.

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

The one I love the most is about two mayflies on a date; they watch a nature documentary about themselves and discover their life span is only one day long ? after mating, they'll die.

Listen, I say, funny is the best thing I am. Faith says, Making jokes is your way of saying 'Do you love me?' and when someone laughs you think they've said yes.

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.

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.

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

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.