Top 100 Abbi Waxman Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Biology is not destiny. And love is not proportionate to shared DNA.”

— Abbi Waxman

2. “Then don’t borrow trouble from tomorrow, baby. Don’t worry about how it might go wrong; just let yourself be happy.”

— Abbi Waxman

3. “Leaving her apartment every morning was the turning over of a giant hourglass, the mental energy she’d stored up overnight eroding grain by grain. She refueled during the day by grabbing moments of solitude and sometimes felt her life was a long-distance swim between islands of silence. She enjoyed people – she really did – she just needed to take them in homeopathic doses; a little of the poison was the cure.”

— Abbi Waxman

4. “It contained Nina’s favorite saying: You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.”

— Abbi Waxman

5. “Other people are overrated.”

— Abbi Waxman

6. “Someone once told me that anxiety lives in the unknown future, depression lives in the unforgettable past, and peace lives in acceptance of the present moment.”

— Abbi Waxman

7. “As a child she’d been told she had ADD, or ADHD, or some other acronym, but her school librarian had simply clicked her tongue and told her she was imaginative and creative and couldn’t be expected to wait for everyone else to catch up.”

— Abbi Waxman

8. “Sometimes I worry that I’m self-obsessed, and then I worry that I’m thinking about myself too much.”

— Abbi Waxman

9. “Being surrounded by books was the closest she’d ever gotten to feeling like the member of a gang. The books had her back, and the nonfiction, at least, was ready to fight if necessary.”

— Abbi Waxman

10. “I don’t think she let herself go, Charlie. I think she just lets herself be.”

— Abbi Waxman

11. “It was one of the paradoxes of parenting that the children you wished you had were actually the versions of your own children that other parents saw.”

— Abbi Waxman

12. “Anxiety is what kept us alive, back in the day. It helps us know when things are wrong, when situations are dangerous or people mean us harm. It’s just sometimes it gets ahead of itself, right?” Nina nodded. “I know.”

— Abbi Waxman

13. “Being with you is as good as being alone.”

— Abbi Waxman

Featured in: Romance Quotes

14. “Life tends toward chaos, sadly. I thought I had my life all planned out nicely, and then... everything changed completely. It’s all very well to have a plan – its a good idea – but you have to be able to walk away from it if you need to.”

— Abbi Waxman

15. “If you’re not scared, you’re not brave.”

— Abbi Waxman

16. “Sometimes life is just what it is, and the best you can hope for is ice cream.”

— Abbi Waxman

17. “Is book smart the only smart that counts?”

— Abbi Waxman

18. “It didn’t matter what hit the fan; as long as there were unread books in the world, she would be fine. Being surrounded by books was the closest she’d ever gotten to feeling like the member of a gang. The books had her back, and the nonfiction, at least, was ready to fight if necessary.”

— Abbi Waxman

19. “It’s this occasional hit of success that makes for a real addict. The breakthrough was always imminent; there was always something about to happen. In the dim interstices between flashes of hope you make your life.”

— Abbi Waxman

20. “Sister,” she said, “you need to work on your banter.”

— Abbi Waxman

21. “That’s one positive thing about texting; you can pause and consider your options, whereas in face-to-face conversation, a silence of three minutes would be weird.”

— Abbi Waxman

22. “Maybe there is no real thing for anyone. Maybe all of us change depending on where we are and who we’re with.” “And that’s why you like to be alone.” Eliza looked at her and smiled. “How do you mean?” “Because you prefer who you are when you’re alone.” Nina shrugged. “It takes a lot of energy to be with other people. It’s easier to be myself when there’s no one else there.”

— Abbi Waxman

23. “Body language told you so much; text on its own was subject to misinterpretation in every way possible.”

— Abbi Waxman

24. “Nina had looked around and realized she would never run out of things to read, and that certainty filled her with peace and satisfaction. It didn’t matter what hit the fan; as long as there were unread books in the world, she would be fine.”

— Abbi Waxman

25. “Mind you, these were professional children, the offspring of creative people and deep thinkers, who’d marveled over them as babies, encouraged them to express themselves as toddlers, and wished they’d been more consistent and mean to them now that they were old enough to sass back.”

— Abbi Waxman

26. “Since when had my little kid turned into the Spanish Inquisition? Nobody expects that.”

— Abbi Waxman

27. “It didn’t matter what they weren’t; it only mattered who they were.”

— Abbi Waxman

28. “Actually insane, as in mentally ill, or mad as a hatter insane?”

— Abbi Waxman

29. “Libraries were her favorite places, and when she traveled, she would start out at the local library, thus immediately identifying herself as a total nerd.”

— Abbi Waxman

30. “Nina could tell from his tone of voice that her new nephew was a morning person, that despicable breed.”

— Abbi Waxman

31. “Look, I cleared you a corner.” Tom pointed to an area near a large window. It was dark then, of course, but in the daytime it would get plenty of light. “I was going to surprise you and put a comfy chair there so you could sit and read while I worked, and we could, you know, hang out.” He tugged her closer and kissed her. “I want to be with you the way you are, the way you’re going to be, and the way you end up. Every way you are is beautiful to me.”

— Abbi Waxman

32. “Tomorrow would be better. At the very least, tomorrow would be different.”

— Abbi Waxman

33. “Surely her purpose in life wasn’t simply to read as many books as possible?”

— Abbi Waxman

34. “People were... exhausting. They made her anxious. Leaving her apartment every morning was the turning over of a giant hourglass, the mental energy she’d stored up overnight eroding grain by grain. She refueled during the day by grabbing moments of solitude and sometimes felt her life was a long-distance swim between islands of silence.”

— Abbi Waxman

35. “Nothing. The first thing you should always do is nothing.”

— Abbi Waxman

36. “It also meant she thought of books as medication and sanctuary and the source of all good things. Nothing yet had proven her wrong.”

— Abbi Waxman

37. “You do realize it isn’t mandatory to live your life online, right? For thousands of years we managed to be miserable or joyful in private. You can still do it.”

— Abbi Waxman

38. “Was he mad at her? It was so difficult in text, and she wondered if her generation’s reliance on written communication was making them better writers or simply more confused people. Body language told you so much; text on its own was subject to misinterpretation in every way possible. You’d think they’d all get very good at subtletly and vocabulary, in order to make their brief conversations more precise, but she hadn’t noticed that trend.”

— Abbi Waxman

39. “Book nerds are daredevils, as you know.”

— Abbi Waxman

40. “Nina was enjoying the book; the writing was beautiful, the characters were real, the situations were bittersweet, but it was after an hour or so of reading that she came across a line that struck her so forcefully she had to close the book for a moment: “I’m lonely, ” the young character Ulysses said, “and I don’t know what I’m lonely for.”

— Abbi Waxman

41. “Coming out of a book was always painful.”

— Abbi Waxman

42. “She herself, like every woman she knew, only recognized her own youthful perfection in retrospect, with deep regret not for losing it but for not seeing it at the time.”

— Abbi Waxman

43. “She enjoyed people – she really did – she just needed to take them in homeopathic doses; a little of the poison was the cure.”

— Abbi Waxman

44. “As her good friend Leah once said, she wasn’t mean; she was painfully accurate.”

— Abbi Waxman

45. “He looked at me thoughtfully, and smiled slowly, his green eyes warm. He smelled of the outdoors, he was so tall and broad shouldered and so... male... in this house of women he was shockingly different. All I could think of was how much I wanted to kiss him. I was clearly losing my mind.”

— Abbi Waxman

46. “The trivia, the reading, the book club... they were simply weapons of self-defense.”

— Abbi Waxman

47. “Do you know the best feeling in the world?” “Uh... ” Nina shook her head, despite having some ideas. Liz glowed. “It’s reading a book, loving every second of it, then turning to the front and discovering that the writer wrote fourteen zillion others.”

— Abbi Waxman

48. “Nina looked down and smiled. She’d never felt more at home than she did at Knight’s, with the plentiful sarcasm and soothing rows of book spines. It was heaven on earth. Now, if they could only get rid of the customers and lock the front doors, they’d really be onto something.”

— Abbi Waxman

49. “Oh my God, she thought, it’s hard to be human sometimes, with the pressure to be civilized lying only very thinly over the brain of a nervous little mammal.”

— Abbi Waxman

50. “All new activities are excuses for shopping.”

— Abbi Waxman