Quotes from "Why We Broke Up"

          I'm a little bit passed the age to be able to happily admit that I read a young adult novel, but I did and it was wonderful. For those of you who don't know, Daniel Handler is Lemony Snicket's real name. 
          This book is a letter written by a girl who is on her way to return a box full of stuff she acquired while dating her ex-boyfriend. There is wonderful artwork by Maira Kalman to go along with the story. It's a great story and you should read the book, but in case you're one of those unfortunate people that can't sit through an entire book, I have some highlights for you.

          P.S. I'm one of those blessed people who underline/highlight/write in books, which is how I'm able to bring you these wonderful quotes in the first place. Sorry about it.

And the truth is that I goddamn loved you so much.

You either have the feeling or you don't.

But you wanted to know if you could call me. Who were you to do that, who was I saying yes?

I asked you how you lost. 
"Don't," you said. "If I have to tell you how we lost, it will hurt all of my feelings."
I liked that, all of my feelings. "Every last one?" I asked. "Really?"
"Well," you said, and took a sip, "I might have one or two left. I might still have a feeling."

...and although I didn't listen, I hung on every word.

The thing with your heart's desire is that your heart doesn't even know what it desires until it turns up.

Take back the smile and the night, take it all back, I wish I could.

What I wanted is what I got.

I gasped and pointed the way. I gave you an adventure.

And then from nowhere, you were in my life again, tapping me on the shoulder with your hair combed and damp, smiling, maybe nervous. Maybe breathless like me.

It breaks my heart to give this back to you, but you're already heartbroken, so we're even.

...let's go together toward something extraordinary and I started making plans, thinking we would get that far.

I want what can't possibly happen, and that is why we broke up.

But you seemed to like, I think, I hoped back then, that I was different.

Shit, I guess I already loved you then. Doomed like a wineglass knowing it'll get dropped someday, shoes that'll be scuffed in no time, the new shirt you'll soon enough muck up filthy.

Wherever it's good, whatever strange faraway land, let's go there, let's stay in that place alone.

"The whole thing of what I've been trying," you said, "is that you're different, and you keep asking about the other girls, but what I mean is that I don't think about them, because of the way you are."

"You think everything's sexual tension," I said to Lauren, "just because you were raised by Mr. and Mrs. Super-Christian. We Jews know that underlying tensions are always due to low blood sugar."
"Yeah, well, you killed my Savior," Lauren said, and Jordan saluted good-bye. "Don't let it happen again."

My ears ached from how loud they loved you.

I gave you my spirit and you won.

I mean, who would dare think that, forever? Some idiot girl who wouldn't know how things played out.

You held me then let go.

...like coffee needs to be black, like a virgin needs a boyfriend. So many things I'll never get back.

Dumping you times infinity. Still not enough.

Now, you kissed me in this great place with a confidence, a joy, with no shrug, hungrily, eager.

There wasn't enough ink and paper to say all I wanted.

They should teach my mother, everybody's mother, how to leave people alone.

The phone rings---it's another day, or the same day, who can tell, the girl thinks with her coffee, when the whole world has changed? She gets coffee again, the cars go by, reflected in the window. The world, she thinks, has changed.

"You don' t get it."
"You don't like it."
"I have no opinion."

"I guess I think, Min, that when I think about sex, you know, I want it to feel good. Not feel good, shut up, but right. Happy, not just banging away somewhere. You know, you should not just do it to do it. You should love the guy."

I'm not a cuckoo, either. I'm a fool is what.

"And love, who can say the way it winds," she recited, "like a serpent in the garden of our untroubled minds."

They tell you in the pamphlets they throw at us, they say talk to your parents or a clergyman or a trusted teacher or friend. But there is nobody acceptable on that list, parents part of the problem, a teacher who will say There are some conversations I'm not really allowed to have with you, and most friends squealing to their other friends just like a clergyman will tattle to God.

But everything else is gone,  I mean, I love you is gone...

I'll tell you what's the use of friendship, because we were never friends. The use is racing off into the night, is what the use is. Rolling down the windows, the rained-out air in our faces all the way to the shop. The use is the good talking, and the not talking as we go there.

HOPE, what a laugh.

Why not rise from the grave and terrorize a little instead of staying buried and dead in the cemetery?

...fuck it and let it go.

I leaned over to rest my head aching on your arm and we sat still for a moment while the music buoyed us along.

It was that lovely thing, that time so beautiful there, that led me back to your corner.

I felt my heartbeat beating, brave and fierce, my legs liberated and my arms up in the glorious air, the lights glitter in my eyes, my lips open with the lyrics, and all my thinking erased from my skull while the song roared loud and free.

We snuggle up and drank more water, feeling like it had extra oxygen, like we were mineralized and filtered too. Pure, even. And I stretched up to find your ear and whisper it just as you murmured it to me, like we too had practiced together, like we were a combo apart from the frantic of the world, a dotted line sneaking away from the clutch of the school and pressure, just loose and steady beating together in a place nobody else could ever find. I love you, of course is what we said.

"I hope you know what you're doing."

"And you know," you said, "you can, it's not a big deal if you change your mind."
I leaned against you, hard, like I'd forgotten how to stand for just a sec. "I won't," I said and it was true. But it was just true then. "I'll never change my mind."

I stayed there loving you, though the love made me, not sad but I guess melancholy, for a reason I couldn't point to.

Here it just looks strange. It was strange. But I loved it too.

I believe you because look at this water, bottled in a place that sounds made up, the odd icons on the label, the way it tasted like nothing, but some kind of better nothing. What  does it mean? Where does something like this come from? How can you find it ever again, just what you wanted at just the right time? Never, probably. It's empty and nothing now, I don't even know why I kept it, and I'll keep it no more. 

I had such, you would not believe the such a feeling I had. You couldn't film it, it couldn't be captured. It couldn't happen almost, but there it was happening anyway.