Top 70 Jennifer Crusie Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “If you haven’t failed, you’re not trying hard enough.”

— Jennifer Crusie

2. “Nothing but good times ahead.”

— Jennifer Crusie

3. “Be sober, be vigilant because your adversary the Devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.”

— Jennifer Crusie

4. “Broaden your horizons. They’re the only ones you’ll ever have, so make the suckers as wide as possible.”

— Jennifer Crusie

5. “If you can’t be a good example, then be a terrible warning.”

— Jennifer Crusie

6. “Once you know the truth, it’s always obvious.”

— Jennifer Crusie

7. “I believe things will work out for us if we just believe in ourselves.”

— Jennifer Crusie

8. “This is making me crazy. I hate relying on other people to save me, I hate being clingy, I hate it, and every time you show up, I lean on you. – Matilda Scarlet Veronica Betty Vilma Goodnight.”

— Jennifer Crusie

9. “When Eve ate the apple her knowledge increased. But God liked dumb women so Paradise ceased. Gwen Goodnight. Her Work.”

— Jennifer Crusie

10. “Every species has a dinner date as part of courting ritual. A woman who won’t let you pay for dinner is rejecting your courtship. She may think she’s playing fair, or that she’s being a feminist, but a very deep level, she knows that she’s crossing you off her list of possibilities.”

— Jennifer Crusie

11. “His sentences didn’t seem to have any verbs, which was par for a politician. All nouns, no action.”

— Jennifer Crusie

12. “Real life doesn’t have to suck.”

— Jennifer Crusie

13. “Breasts are very important for women. Their clothes just don’t hang right without them.”

— Jennifer Crusie

14. “Nobody in my life has ever known me the way you do. Nobody in my life has ever made me feel as good as you do. You know me, you know everything about me, and when you leave me, you’re going to be leaving the real me, the me nobody else has ever seen, that’s who you’re going to be rejecting.”

— Jennifer Crusie

15. “If you are not going to be a comfort, have the decency to be an empty space.”

— Jennifer Crusie

16. “It’s just that you don’t respect me enough to respect what I want. I have to want what you want or it doesn’t count or its’s no good. Well, I don’t want what you want. And I don’t see why I have to. I mean, as long as I respect what you want and let you live your life, why do you care?”

— Jennifer Crusie

17. “I like my afterglow with you in motion. I measure time by how your body sways.”

— Jennifer Crusie

18. “The measuring and mixing always smoothed out her thinking processes – nothing was as calming as creaming butter – and when the kitchen was warm from the oven overheating and the smell of baking chocolate, she took final stock of where she’d been and where she was going. Everything was fine.”

— Jennifer Crusie

19. “In the bad old days, men kept women from choosing to work. In the bad new days, women keep women from choosing to stay home.”

— Jennifer Crusie

20. “I don’t want to be alone anymore, but I don’t want to go out and cold-bloodedly look for a man, either.” – Kate Svenson.”

— Jennifer Crusie

21. “Everybody’s crooked. The trick is to find out how they’re bent.”

— Jennifer Crusie

22. “Look, Mother, I am never going to be thin. I’m Norwegian. If you wanted a thin daughter, you should not have married a man whose female ancestors carried cows home from the pasture.”

— Jennifer Crusie

23. “Of course it hurt you neanderthal! See that? Thats blood. If theres blood, theres pain. Its like smoke and fire.”

— Jennifer Crusie

24. “I could shove this swizzle stick through his heart, Min thought. She would’nt do it, of course. The stick was plastic and not nearly pointed enough on the end.”

— Jennifer Crusie

25. “Very few people mate for life with the people they fall for at twelve. Doesn’t mean is isn’t real, doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt, doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter, but basically, we’re talking a practice swing in the big game of love.”

— Jennifer Crusie

26. “Sorry. I forgot your lust for small talk. And how have you been in the fourteen hours since we last spoke, eight of which you were sleeping?”

— Jennifer Crusie

27. “We’re going to need a bigger dock.”

— Jennifer Crusie

28. “Part of being a writer is defending your vision and not caving in to outside pressures.”

— Jennifer Crusie

29. “Can we go to work now? Because we’re about a minute away from breaking out the ice cream and talking about our feelings, and I don’t think we can come back from that.”

— Jennifer Crusie

30. “You got shot at and you still got me an air conditioner.”

— Jennifer Crusie

31. “Feel no guilt. Getting married and giving birth does not mean that you have sold your life away to perfectly healthy people who can get their own damn socks.”

— Jennifer Crusie

32. “Now,” Lynne said, turning back to the table with her lizard smile. “I apologize for interrupting you, Minerva. What were you saying?” She looked at Min as if to say, You have a chance to back down; take it. Min smiled back at her. Bite me, lady.”

— Jennifer Crusie

33. “She slid out from under his arm, and picked up his shirt from the floor. When she put it on, it failed to meet in the middle over her chest. that always worked in the movies, she thought, disgusted, and dropped it on the floor.”

— Jennifer Crusie

34. “If she’d just kept her mouth shut, she would have been perfect, but no...”

— Jennifer Crusie

35. “Don’t let foolish assumptions about what’s appropriate keep you from a good man. There are too few good men around to ignore one just because he’s the perfect age for you.”

— Jennifer Crusie

36. “Four fabulous days and three glorious nights.” More than that, Victoria thought. Fabulous days and glorious nights for the rest of my life.”

— Jennifer Crusie

37. “There was something about having a plan for dinner, a recipe in hand, that made her feel much less hostile about food.”

— Jennifer Crusie

38. “Christ, I’m in a Doris Day movie.”

— Jennifer Crusie

39. “I’ll never forget my first time with you’ Min said as she edged the doughnut off her finger. ‘The earth moved, and then my mother asked my father who he was going down on at lunch.”

— Jennifer Crusie

40. “Dempseys are never in trouble. We just have stretches of life that are more interesting than others.”

— Jennifer Crusie

41. “I’m talkin’ about you. Stop pretending you’re normal. You’re insane. Make that work for you.”

— Jennifer Crusie

42. “If you’re going to have an asthma attack in the surf, I strongly recommend you do so in Nantucket.”

— Jennifer Crusie

43. “What happened to the good old days when rich white men just bought their way into office?”

— Jennifer Crusie

44. “As far as I’m concerned the last good man went when Elvis died.”

— Jennifer Crusie

45. “There wasn’t enough gratitude in the world for a server who kept drinks coming at a time like this.”

— Jennifer Crusie

46. “You’re not by any chance my stepmother are you?” Min said to her mother’s reflection. “Because that would explain so much.”

— Jennifer Crusie

47. “Where were all the women gamblers? It wasn’t as if being a woman wasn’t a huge risk all by itself. Twenty-eight percent of female homocide victims were killed by husbands or lovers. Which, come to think of it, was probably why there weren’t any women gamblers. Living with men was enough of a gamble.”

— Jennifer Crusie

48. “A lot of really big trees had died to make that desk. His mother had probably gnawed them down, used her nails to saw the boards, and finished the decorative cutwork with her tongue.”

— Jennifer Crusie

49. “You’ve lived in America for twenty years. Eat badly, damn it.”

— Jennifer Crusie

50. “He looked like every glossy frat boy in every nerd movie ever made, like every popular town boy who’d ever looked right through her in high school, like every rotten rich kid who’d ever belonged where she hadn’t. My mama warned me about guys like you. He.”

— Jennifer Crusie