Top 100 Abbi Waxman Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “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

52. “I just want to know what I’m crying about.”

— Abbi Waxman

53. “Life will throw you major curveballs, but it’s rare you can do much more than duck.”

— Abbi Waxman

54. “She sometimes made lists of things she’d already done solely so she could cross them off, which she couldn’t help feeling was pretty pathetic but strangely satisfying.”

— Abbi Waxman

55. “You had to STAY married in the brief pauses between BEING married and those pauses so often had to be rescheduled.”

— Abbi Waxman

56. “Regret is one of those emotions that outpunches reality: Even if you 100 percent could not have done things differently, it still pops up and takes a jab.”

— Abbi Waxman

57. “Beauty always fades, but it lasts so much longer if you lay a thick layer of intelligence and integrity underneath it.”

— Abbi Waxman

58. “Does the day have a Y in it?”

— Abbi Waxman

59. “Gaiman once memorably said, “Books were safer than other people, anyway.”

— Abbi Waxman

60. “Bad things sometimes happen to good sentences.”

— Abbi Waxman

61. “Everyone tells you middle school is fun, and then you get there and it sucks. Then high school is going to be fun, but you get there and it both sucks and is really hard. Now, apparently, college is going to be fun, but it really seems like one more hurdle standing between me and actual happiness. Whatever that is.”

— Abbi Waxman

62. “I’m lonely,” the young character Ulysses said, “and I don’t know what I’m lonely for.”

— Abbi Waxman

63. “I was lounging in the kitchen, enjoying the small fermata between emptying the dishwasher and reloading it. It’s a glamorous life.”

— Abbi Waxman

64. “Phil wasn’t really saying any of this, of course, because he’s a cat and cats don’t talk, but his voice in her head was listing her dream dads.”

— Abbi Waxman

65. “I have lots of favorite books because I have lots of moods and I have a favorite book for every mood.”

— Abbi Waxman

66. “I guess there are as many ways to mother someone as there are mothers.”

— Abbi Waxman

67. “I wanted that November feeling, you know, when you suddenly remember the holidays are coming and your tummy gets all excited and it’s like being seven again.”

— Abbi Waxman

68. “Three hours later, the book finished, her cheeks a little pink because it was so sad and lovely and sad again, Nina stood up and stretched. Coming out of a book was always painful. She was surprised to see things had remained in place while she herself had been roaming other towns, other times.”

— Abbi Waxman

69. “How many people do we encounter every day who might be related to us, or simply people who might have become the best friends we ever had, or our second spouses, or the agents of our destruction, if we only spent more than seconds with them? He realized he was staring.”

— Abbi Waxman

70. “Annabel was just gazing out the window, presumably pondering the inherent mortality and futility of life. Then I realized she was singing the SpongeBob theme song, so probably not.”

— Abbi Waxman

71. “I was suddenly filled with sympathy for her, as I am for all young people. It’s a little bit hideous, that first part of adulthood.”

— Abbi Waxman

72. “Shelf space was always a problem for the dedicated booklover.”

— Abbi Waxman

73. “It was a FriXion, she was pleased to see, and then she was mildly embarrassed that she even noticed.”

— Abbi Waxman

74. “We’re family; you can ignore us completely. We’re like succulents: Minor occasional attention is entirely sufficient.”

— Abbi Waxman

75. “Annabel nodded at her, turning to climb into her own seat, fastening her own harness with the self-assurance of a test pilot on his fiftieth run, rather than someone with no front teeth and a Dora barrette in her hair.”

— Abbi Waxman

76. “They love to criticize us for being on our phones, despite the fact that their generation created the phones, marketed the phones, and are profiting from the phones. They’re drug pushers making fun of the junkies, which, if you think about it, is lame AF. Besides, any day now those same junkies are taking over the street corner, so they should try to be nice.”

— Abbi Waxman

77. “Your cat registered a complaint by standing on my eyeball.”

— Abbi Waxman

78. “You grew up in a family, you left that family and then, life permitting, you built your own family using much of the same material.”

— Abbi Waxman

79. “I think new relationships are definitely exciting, but I also think love sometimes feels like sailing into harbor.” She finished her wine. “Like running into someone you’ve known a long, long time but never met before.”

— Abbi Waxman

80. “Men who like Star Trek but not Star Wars, or the other way around. As if they’re so incredibly different. Or who only like the original Star Trek.”

— Abbi Waxman

81. “The only thing better than canceling plans is having the other person cancel plans.”

— Abbi Waxman

82. “It’s hard to love yourself while simultaneously striving to become the best you you can be, which implies your current version could use some work.”

— Abbi Waxman

83. “I guess I left the window open; there’s rain all over my face.”

— Abbi Waxman

84. “I wish I was one of those people who clean as they go, who are models of organization and clarity, but I’m just not. If I find myself with a piece of paper in my hand, and I’m unsure where to put it, I lay it down on the nearest surface and hope it folds itself into a paper plane and flies wherever it’s supposed to go.”

— Abbi Waxman

85. “When I hear about a woman beating her children, I often think the sentence “But those aren’t the Dora ones” must have been the last thing she heard before the red mist took away her sanity.”

— Abbi Waxman

86. “I watched you and Edward. People who are going to kiss do it with their eyes first.”

— Abbi Waxman

87. “Candice Hill had grown up in the darkest Australian wilds of the 1980s, where, reportedly, the women glowed and the men plundered, but no one had a cell phone.”

— Abbi Waxman

88. “Her cat, Phil, was sitting on the gate waiting for her. Phil was a tabby of the brown and cream variety, with a black tip to his tail and white feet. He jumped down as the gate opened and preceded her up the stairs, the tip of his tail forming a jaunty accent like the marker flag on a toddler’s bicycle.”

— Abbi Waxman

89. “There is nothing – nothing – that isn’t improved by laying a thick piece of chocolate frosting on top of it.”

— Abbi Waxman

90. “It’s the world’s most wonderful and most terrible job, and if you do it well enough, you get fired.”

— Abbi Waxman

91. “Because we sold you a book and you read it. That’s pretty much the whole life cycle of bookstores right there. If you didn’t enjoy it, I’m very sorry, but we can’t do anything about it.”

— Abbi Waxman

92. “All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware. – Martin Buber.”

— Abbi Waxman

93. “She cleared her throat. “I’m never going to give you up.” He replied, “Never going to let you down.” She said, “Never going to run around and desert you.”

— Abbi Waxman

94. “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

95. “He’d been lurking in the shadows, a catnip mouse nearby, fresh teeth marks dimpling its damp surface. Even cats cut loose on Saturday night.”

— Abbi Waxman

96. “It was exhausting sometimes simply being alive.”

— Abbi Waxman

97. “You convince yourself you’re building a safety net for your kids when in fact it’s a trap they’ll spend the rest of their lives trying to get free of.”

— Abbi Waxman

98. “But I want to be a toilet.”

— Abbi Waxman

99. “Dammit. Now she was going to have to change her planner. Nina hated changing her planner.”

— Abbi Waxman

100. “Laura looked at the cat. The cat looked at her. Neither of them said anything, Laura because she didn’t speak cat and the cat because she was mentally composing a letter to her senator.”

— Abbi Waxman