Buxbaum Quotes

Enemies-to-lovers—it’s our trope, Buxbaum.

So... be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray or Mordecai Ali Van Allen O'Shea, you're off to Great Places! Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So...get on your way!

And will you succeed? Yes! You will, indeed! (98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed.) KID, YOU'LL MOVE MOUNTAINS! So... be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray or Mordecai Ali Van Allen O'Shea, you're off to Great Places! Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So...get on your way!

Just because you're strong doesn't mean you shouldn't ask for help sometimes. Remember that.

A girl will never forget the first boy she likes.” —He’s Just Not That into You “But she’ll also never forget the first boy she hates.” —Liz Buxbaum

Perfect days are for people with small, realizable dreams. Or maybe for all of us, they just happen in retrospect; they're only now perfect because they contain something irrevocably and irretrievably lost.

Do you realize we could’ve been doing this for years if you weren’t such a pain in the ass?” “Nah—I didn’t like you until recently.” “Enemies-to-lovers—it’s our trope, Buxbaum.” “You poor, confused little love lover.” A giggle shimmied through me before I set my hands on his face and said as I pulled him back to me, “Just shut up and kiss me.

Other people can't make you feel stupid. Only you can.

But sometimes a kiss is not a kiss is not a kiss. Sometimes it’s a poetry.

Not knowing the right thing to do is not an excuse for not doing anything.

One of the worst parts about someone dying is thinking back to all those times you didn’t ask the right questions, all those times you stupidly assumed you’d have all the time in the world. And this too: how all that time feels like not much time at all.

Not feeling like I belong anywhere has made me crave constant motion; standing still feels risky, like asking to be a target.

You can’t wait 17 hours for me?’ ‘Buxbaum, I’ve waited my whole life for you.

He's more like me, I think: burdened with the realization that what goes on his mind is somehow different from what goes on everyone else's. Even those close to us. And how you can't think about that for too long, because that thought- the truth of your own isolation- is too much to bear.

Wake up. This is your life, for God sakes. It's time to face up to it. You can't get anywhere, can't get over anything, if you don't let yourself feel anything in the first place. It's time.

There’s nothing lonelier than a hand on glass. Maybe because it’s so rarely reciprocated.

Holy shit, Liz Buxbaum knows my scent.

My fear of saying something stupid often leaves me saying almost nothing at all.

And that's why I finally ended it. I realized today that it's exhausting to be a coward.

I have seen the sea when it is stormy and wild; when it is quiet and serene; when it is dark and moody. And in all its moods, I see myself

I don't even want to spend the rest of my life with me.. how do you explain to someone you love that you can't give yourself to them because if you did, you're not sure who you'd be giving? That you aren't sure what your own words are worth? You can't tell someone that, especially someone you love. And so you don't. Instead, I do the right thing. I lie.

I think of his hands fixing me a plate, almost touching my banged-up face, and all I can think about is how much I want to kiss them: his eyes, his hands too. All of him. His damaged parts. All of him.

SN: you know what I think about sometimes? Me: What? SN: you know that piece of hair that always falls into your eyes—the not-quite-a-bang piece? I want to be able to tuck it behind your ear. I want to be able to do that. I want to meet you when I feel comfortable enough with you to do that. Me: You are so weird. SN: you are not the first person to say that. Me: Am I the first to say that I really like that about you?

Though everyone I knew seemed to be either settling down or looking to settle down, I was never on a deep-sea fishing expedition to find a boyfriend. And a "great catch," well, that seemed to be begging for heartache.

I miss the way he used to kiss my shoulder whenever it was bare and he was nearby. I miss how he cleared his throat before he took a sip of water and scratched his left arm with his right hand when he was nervous. I miss how he tucked my hair behind my ear when it came loose and took my temperature when I was sick or when he was bored. I miss his glasses on my nightstand. I miss watching him take Sunday afternoon naps on my couch, with the newspaper resting on his stomach like a blanket. How his hands stayed clasped, fingers intertwined, while he slept. I miss the cadence of his speech and the stupidity of his puns. I miss playing doctor when we made love, and even when we didn't. I miss his smell, like fresh laundry and honey (because of his shampoo) at his place. Fresh laundry and coconut (because of my shampoo) at mine. I miss that he used to force me to listen to French rap and would sing along in a horrible accent. I miss that he always said "I love you" when he hung up the phone with his sister, never shy or embarassed, regardless of who else was around. I miss that his ideal Friday night included a DVD, eating Chinese food right out of the carton, and cuddling on top of my duvet cover. I miss that he reread books from his childhood and then from mine. I miss that he was the only man that I have ever farted on, and with, freely. I miss that he understood that the holidays were hard for me and that he wanted me to never feel lonely.

The thing is, sometimes people grow from breaking.

His two front teeth are slightly crooked, veer just a tiny bit to the right, as if they've decided perfection is overrated. His smile is like unlocking a riddle. How does an imperfection make him seem more perfect?

You know how it is. Mean girls get mean in seventh grade and they stay that way until your ten-year reunion, when they want to be best friends again.

What if we all jumped out of our boxes and chewed up our stupid labels? Who would we discover?

They seem to understand that the world is a big, diverse place, and that different is not the same thing as scary. It’s amazing to me how many people mistake the two.

Liz Buxbaum had always been my secret. She was the incredible thing I’d known about but everyone else seemed to miss. The treasure hidden in plain sight, the fortune of a lifetime that was somehow only visible to me.

I wish we could keep on forgetting to remember ourselves.

But sometimes a kiss is not a kiss is not a kiss. Sometimes it's poetry.

Maybe home doesn have to be a place.

you make me want to know what goes on in that head of yours. I'll be honest: I'm not usually interested in the contents of others people's heads. My own is work enough.

Come to think of it, I don't want to be my friend either.

Now, mind you, I just wanted to crawl off into a corner and die from my horrific battle wounds. But if Mrs. Buxbaum needed me, I was damn well going to help.

I know that love is not finite.

Tears are kind of like urine. There is only so long you can hold them in.

I hate the word “bitch.” I do. Using the B-word makes me feel like a bad feminist, but sometimes there is no other word.

Time does not heal all wounds, no matter how many drugstore sympathy cards hastily scrawled by distant relatives promise this to be true.

I think about my dad's favorite expression: People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. What is my house made of? Paper, I decide. Like in a pop-up book. Easily collapsible.

Liz Buxbaum was killing me softly and there was nothing I could do to ease the pain.

Here's what I know: I eat mass quantities of red meat, curse religiously, sing out of tune but with conviction. I cry when it suits me, laugh when it's inopportune, read The New York Times obituaries and wedding announcements, out loud and in that order.

Some people...no matter how old they get, never lose their beauty.They merely move it, from their faces into their hearts.

Every happy moment from now on will have the lingering, bitter, heartbreaking aftertaste of loss.

So you’re saying that on Friday night I have an equal chance of getting vomited on as I do of getting kissed?” “Welcome to high school,

If we treated everyone we meet with the same affection we bestow upon our favorite cat, they, too, would purr.

And pretty,” my mom says. Pretty doesn’t fit Kit. It’s too small a word. Like her name. “Not pretty,” I correct her. “Beautiful.

Last night, we IM'd so late, I fell asleep with my computer on my lap and woke to his words dinging on my screen. Three things, he said: (1) good morning, (2) I have keybord marks on my face. slept on the "sdfg." (3) you leave in 24 hours, and I'm going to miss you.

I realize we all walk around pretending we have some control over our fate, because to recognize the truth--that no matter what we do, the bottom will fall out when we least expect it--is just too unbearable to live with.

Sometimes, when Scarlett says I'm strong, I think she really means I'm numb.

Suddenly, everything seems irrevocably broken in that way it can in the middle of the night when you are alone.

And now that I've been exposed to this feeling, perfect mouth against perfect mouth, the natural order of things, I wonder why people don't kiss all day, every day. How does anything ever get done?

Everything passes, Jessie. Remember that. What feels huge today will feel small tomorrow,

In the Venn diagram of my life, my imagined personality and my real personality have never converged. Over email and text, though, I am given those few additional beats I need to be the better, edited version of myself. To

I like to think of my people as mute optimists - leave the elephant alone and, eventually, perhaps with the help of a couple mimosas, he will disappear from the room on his own accord.

My mom once told me that the world is divided into two kinds of people: the ones who love their high school years and the ones who spend the next decade recovering from them. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, she said. But something did kill her, and I’m not stronger. So go figure; maybe there’s a third kind of person: the ones who never recover from high school at all.

Three things?” I ask. “I read about it in a book. Seems like a good way to get to know someone. Having to choose three things.

It's basic physics, really. We all need an equal and opposing force.

I’m so, so tired of always worrying about our world splitting into a before and an after again.

He's more like me, I think: burdened with the realization that what goes on in his mind is somehow different from what goes on in everyone else's. Even those closest to us. And how you can't think about that for too long, because that thought - the truth of our isolation - is too much to bear.

Perfect days are for people with small, realizable dreams. Or maybe for all of us, they just happen in retrospect; they’re only now perfect because they contain something irrevocably and irretrievably lost.

I saw the paper.” Wes looked like he was trying not to laugh as his entire face smiled. “I saw the paper, so it’s pointless to deny it. It was sitting on your planner this morning and it said ‘The Soundtrack of M&L.’ Oh my God, Buxbaum, that is freaking adorable.” I laughed even though I was mortified. “Shut up, Wes.” “What songs are on it?” “Seriously.” “Seriously, I want to know. Is it all boot-knocking songs, like Ginuwine and Nine Inch Nails, or is it cheesy romance? Was Taylor Swift on the list?

That's the blessing and the curse of loss: You don't get to choose what falls within the inevitable dissolution of recollection or what lingers and haunts you late at night, your head heavy with memories, while your husband dreams of scaling walls in spandex tights.This is who I am: someone who simultaneously longs for and fears the commitment of remembering. There is the forgetting, the disintegration of memory, morsel by morsel; and there is the impossibility of forgetting, the scar tissue, with is insulated layers of padding. Both haunt me in their own way.

How's things, buddy?" Trey asks after we run through a few finger-warming exercises. I realize this is what people call small talk. I also realize the world would be a better place without it.

Home is where we tie one end of the thread of life.

It's just him and me, Ethan is Ethan is Ethan and Jessie is Jessie is Jessie, and his lips touch mine.

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the guy who'll decide where to go... Oh, the places you'll go! There is fun to be done! There are points to be scored. There are games to be won. And the magical things you can do with that ball will make you the winning-est winner of all. Fame! You'll be as famous as famous can be, with the whole wide world watching you win on TV. Except when they don't Because, sometimes they won't. I'm afraid that some times you'll play lonely games too. Games you can't win 'cause you'll play against you. All Alone! Whether you like it or not, Alone will be something you'll be quite a lot. And when you're alone, there's a very good chance you'll meet things that scare you right out of your pants. There are some, down the road between hither and yon, that can scare you so much you won't want to go on... You'll get mixed up, of course, as you already know. You'll get mixed up with many strange birds as you go. So be sure when you step. Step with care and great tact and remember that Life's a Great Balancing Act. Just never foget to be dexterous and deft. And never mix up your right foot with your left. And will you succeed? Yes! You will, indeed! (98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed.) KID, YOU'LL MOVE MOUNTAINS! So... be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray or Mordecai Ali Van Allen O'Shea, You're off the Great Places! Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So...get on your way!

I used to think loneliness was being stuck with only the one voice in your head. I was wrong. Loneliness is hearing everyone else’s voices too, except they are stuck on repeat: Die, die, die.

Maybe when parents name their children they do it from the perspective of wishful thinking. Like when you go to a restaurant and ask for a rare steak, and even though there is no universally agreed definition of the word rare, you hope you get exactly what you want.

In the Venn diagram of my life, my imagined personality and my real personality have never converged.

the only viable option is to Sherlock the shit out of this.

Turns out grief not only morphs time, but space too. Somehow increases the distance between you and other people.

A dog wags its tail with its heart”.

I'm not sure why I've always assumed that the responsibility of a conversation falls on me.

We are all strangers to each other in the end.

Exactly, You get it. I am who I am, whoever that may be now.

All the tattoos I would get if I were the sort of person who had the nerve to get tattoos, which I am decidedly not. Instead, I'm the kind of person who has spent hours debating said theoretical tattoos, despite my crippling fears of both needles and long-term commitment.

People like to say that the opposite of love is not hate but indifference. There tends to be a whispered reverence around the expression, as if it has magical healing powers. Better to be hated than ignored by that angry ex of yours; better to be hated than ignored, generally. Otherwise, you may spend your life staring straight down the barrel of the opposite of love. But I think that's bullshit. Nonsense print copy for a paper towel. A sound bit e to needlepoint on a throw pillow. Could indifference really be worse than hate? How depressing to think we could be spending most of our days surrounded by people who feel something worse than hate toward us.

This is the opposite of love, I realize, when I look over and see my empty couch, see right through my imaginary companions. The opposite of love isn't hate; it isn't even indifference. It's fucking disembowelment. Hara-kiri. Taking a huge shovel and digging out your own heart, and your intestines, and leaving behind nothing. Nothing of yourself to give, nothing, even, to take away. Nothing but a quiet pulse and some mildly entertaining soap operas. If to love is to hand over self and heart, then this, my friend, this - to self-disembowel - is its opposite. I wish I knew how to needlepoint so I could stitch it onto a fucking pillow.

SN: I'm a righty in all the things. ALL THE THINGS. Me: Was that an attempt at innuendo? SN: your use of the word "attempt" suggests that I failed. Me: #innuendofailure SN: I just said the word "innuendo" a bunch of times in my head and now its lost all meaning. innuendo. innuendo. innuendo. innuendo. Me: Word ruined for me forever. SN: ruinuendo. Me: You are a dork. SN: yes, yes I am. Good that you find this out now.

I know better than anyone that you can't always draw a straight line from the who you once were to the who you are right now.

An important part of growing up is letting yourself see the world around you as it truly is, even if you don't like what you see or your own complicity in it.

I wonder if that’s one definition of growing up—replacing your parents’ voices in your head with your own. I wonder if I’ll one day get there.

David Drucker has a theory about my metaphorical radio waves.

It’s nice to sit with someone and not have to think about what to say next.

Well, why did you act like you wanted me to say yes to Michael’s promposal?” “You’ve loved him since kindergarten.” His eyes were all I could see as he quietly said, “I didn’t want our kiss to get in the way of that if it was what you really wanted.” How had I ever thought Wes was anything other than amazing? I didn’t even try to stop the lovesick smile from taking over my face as I set my hands on his chest and said, “What I really wanted was to go with you.” “Well, you could’ve told me that, Buxbaum.” His voice was just a breath between us as he said, “Because just seeing you in that dress made me want to punch our very good friend Michael.” “It did?” He yanked on the drawstring. “That’s not supposed to make you happy.

There's a famous expression that if you've met one person with autism, then... you've met one person with autism. So you met me. Just me. Not a diagnosis. I realize I hurt you. I forgot to think about you first. I did not put myself in your shoes, as the expression goes. (Though as a sidebar, I think wearing other people's shoes is kind of disgusting; I'm only okay with the concept metaphorically.) So you know, you are all I think about.

It's forbidden to bite a woman's arse. In the absence of a legal precedent, the Imams decided to apply human law to the guilty monkey, whoever it turned out to be. They narrowed it down to Bosco or Shin Bone. The victim was unable to distinguish one monkey from the other.

But something happens when the story you tell yourself turns out not to be your story at all. You have to figure out what to replace it with. Something needs to grow in the space left behind. [p. 280]

You're no Mother, but after you arrived, we began to heal. We all felt it. Father speaks to us through you, and we, likewise, through you to him. Strange, but somehow you've returned the circulation to a dead household You arrived just in time With you here, I don't feel so bad about leaving.

I realize we all walk around pretending we have some control over our fate, because to recognize the truth—that no matter what we do, the bottom will fall out when we least expect it—is just too unbearable to live with.

It pained me to think something so inane, but that morning, as she’d subjected me to an endless T-Swift playlist, I realized that Liz was a fucking Taylor Swift song. She was. Vibey and romantic, but with the uncanny ability to reach inside of you and grab your heart with her absolute specificity. Liz Buxbaum wasn’t just a redhead; no, she was a girl whose hair was the color of the late September maple leaves that fluttered on the home base tree in her front yard. And Liz Buxbaum didn’t just wear a sweater, for God’s sake. No, she wore an apple green cardigan that smelled like Chanel No.5 and the front seat of your car, where she’d left it for a week. She said it reminded her of the way the rain sounded on the roof the first time you kissed her.

I haven't yet figured out who I want to be, dear," Ruth says, answering both my questions, and then throws her head back in a hearty, unselfconscious laugh. "I'm not kidding. I haven't figure it out yet. But don't tell my daughters that. I lie to them every day. I tell them they will figure it out, with time. To just keep doing what they are doing. But let me let you in on a little secret, because I think you can handle it.' She leans in to whisper in my ear. All parents lie to their children. It's our duty. But the truth of the matter is, I don't think many of us know what we are doing. We all walk around much of the time confused and very much alone.

now, suddenly, I want to be anywhere but here. No, the truth is I don’t want to be anywhere at all, because wherever I go, I still come with me. I’m stuck in this brain, in this body, in this ugly swamp of humanness. How do I manage to screw everything up?

A year later we were in a coffee shop, the kind taking a last stand against Starbucks with its thrift-store chairs, vegan cookies, and over-promising teas with names like Serenity and Inner Peace. I was curled up with a stack of causes, trying to get in a few extra hours of work over the weekend, and Andrew sat with one hand gripping his mug, his nose in The New York Times; the two of us a parody of the yuppie couple of the new millennium. We sat silently that way, though there wasn't silence at all. On top of the typical coffee-shop sounds - the whir of an expresso machine, the click of the cash register, the bell above the door - Andrew was making his noises, an occasional snort at something he read in the paper, the jangle of his keys in his pocket, a sniffle since he was getting over a cold, a clearing of his throat. And as we sat there, all I could do was listen to those Andrew-specific noises, the rhythm of his breath, the in-out in-out, its low whistle. Snort. Jangle. Sniffle. Clear. Hypnotized. I wanted to buy his soundtrack. This must be what love is, I thought. Not wanting his noises to ever stop.

Liam's hands are curled into fists, as if he is ready to throw punches right in the middle of IHOP, which is of course a dumb place to fight. There are children here, and polyester booths, and smiley-face pancakes. Multiple kinds of syrup. Some of the drinks even come with maraschino cherries.

I’m not sure what prime numbers have to do with anything,” I say in a gentle voice. “Prime numbers have to do with everything. But to clarify, that’s what I imagine falling in love is like and then staying married. You start out as low twin primes and as time goes on, if you manage to defy the statistical odds and not get divorced, you become like those rarer twin primes, still only separated by two. That’s an amazing feat.” “How romantic

Five years ago, I said vows. And I believe in vows. I meant them, and not just when I said them out loud for an audience to hear but as a motto and a life choice. For as long as we both shall live. I hadn't anticipated the sandy flow of feeling, the yin-yang of love and dread, or the residual buildup of grievances and the slow draining of the benefit of doubt. In good times and in bad. Yes, sure, but in my naivete, I interpreted this as external; we would support each other when the world imposed and intruded. No one tells you that it's the internal that's the real challenge: those moments of decisiveness equal to taking a vow, when you feel the clawing grip of your pormises.