Top 250 Rachel Cohn Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “This is the funny thing about New York – there are so many things to do at all times of the day, but there are still moments when you have no idea which of them to do, and feel extra silly because you know there has to be something out there for you to do; your mind just hasn’t found it yet.”

— Rachel Cohn

52. “This must be part of Mother Nature’s master plan – making these boys so irresistibly cute, in such a naughty way, that the purity of their intentions becomes irrelevant.”

— Rachel Cohn

53. “What’s better, I wonder – to be a toy for the humans, or to control your own destiny, even if the only way to do so is suicide?”

— Rachel Cohn

54. “I particularly loved the adjective bookish, which I found other people used about as often as ramrod or chum or teetotaler.”

— Rachel Cohn

55. “Who else would find me at just this moment? First he found me drunk, now he found me cleaning up poo from a barking pony who was about to go into attack mode.”

— Rachel Cohn

56. “Nick and I could become goodwill ambassadors for the city now that the porno shops on 42nd Street are gone. Must make mental note to contact mayor.”

— Rachel Cohn

57. “That’s what I like about sports. No matter if everyone playing the game speaks completely different languages, on the field, or the court, wherever they are playing, the language of moves and passes and scores is all the same. Universal.”

— Rachel Cohn

58. “Our love had been liking; our feelings had been ordinary, not Shakespearean. I still felt fondness for her – fondness, that pleasant, detached mix of admiration and sentiment, appreciation and nostalgia.”

— Rachel Cohn

59. “The handwriting was a girl’s. I mean, you can tell. That enchanted cursive.”

— Rachel Cohn

60. “But she’s not, and I am left to wonder on my own: How does this work, the getting to know a new guy without revealing too much desperation for his undivided attention?”

— Rachel Cohn

61. “The universe doesn’t decide what’s right or not right. You do.”

— Rachel Cohn

62. “I’ve always been sort of a closet sci-fi geek.”

— Rachel Cohn

63. “All this hoping for nothing-or someone-that’s maybe hopeless.”

— Rachel Cohn

64. “Listen to me: I never married because I was too easily bored. It’s an awful, self-defeating trait to have. It’s much better to be too easily interested.”

— Rachel Cohn

65. “Snarl had infiltrated my subconscious. The dream was obviously a sign: he was too enticing to resist.”

— Rachel Cohn

66. “We all just took the bookstore at its word, because if you couldn’t trust a bookstore, what could you trust?”

— Rachel Cohn

67. “I’ve always resented Hermione, because I wanted to be her so badly and she never seemed to appreciate as much as I thought she should that she got be her. She got to live at Hogwarts and be friends with Harry and kiss Ron, which was supposed to happen to me.”

— Rachel Cohn

68. “Things change all the time, mostly in little ways.”

— Rachel Cohn

69. “Well sure, who doesn’t need a boyfriend? but realistically, those exotic creatures are hard to come by. At least a quality one.”

— Rachel Cohn

70. “We are the ones who take this thing called music and line it up with this thing called time. We are the ticking, we are the pulsing, we are underneath every part of this moment. And by making the moment our own, we are rendering it timeless. There is no audience. There are no instruments. There are only bodies and thoughts and murmurs and looks. It’s the concert rush to end all concert rushes, because this is what matters. When the heart races, this is what it’s racing towards.”

— Rachel Cohn

71. “People come to New York to be different, but I go to Starbucks to be the same.”

— Rachel Cohn

72. “We always see the worst in our selves. Our most volnerable selves. We need someone to get close enough to tell us that we’re wrong. Someone we trust.”

— Rachel Cohn

73. “We met in the park to wrest the afternoon into the shape of a stroll.”

— Rachel Cohn

74. “Do you still Kill Gerbils?”

— Rachel Cohn

75. “Males are the most incomprehensible species.”

— Rachel Cohn

76. “I’m mad at global warming for all the obvious reasons, but mostly I’m mad at it for ruining Christmas. This time of year is supposed to be about teeth-chattering, cold weather that necessitates coats, scarves, and mittens. Outside there should be see-your-breath air that offers the promise of sidewalks covered in snow, while inside, families drink hot chocolate by a roaring fire, huddled close together with their pets to keep warm.”

— Rachel Cohn

77. “I feel like there’s so much darkness in all of my books.”

— Rachel Cohn

78. “She smells like marijuana smoke. It’s not a bad smell. Just a sad one.”

— Rachel Cohn

79. “I half expected to find Sherlock Holmes thumb wrestling with Jane Austen in the corner.”

— Rachel Cohn

80. “Because I withered under the glare of an actual invitation, I was a firm believer in preventive prevarication – in other words, lying early in order to free myself later on.”

— Rachel Cohn

81. “Well what’s in your Amazonian hope chest?”

— Rachel Cohn

82. “And escape?” “Escape, sure. But it wasn’t so much about getting away, as going to. You can go anywhere in a book. Books.”

— Rachel Cohn

83. “It broke the spell. It’s not that I stopped being happy. I was still inexplicably, utterly happy. But suddenly the happiness had implications.”

— Rachel Cohn

84. “Maybe, I thought, it’s not distance that’s the problem, but how you handle it.”

— Rachel Cohn

85. “I could become a nun even if I am a non-believer. I’ll learn to fake it like Nick did with me. I will minister the gospel of compassion and kindness and please, always use a condom, from famine-stricken nations to war-torn dead zones. It’s possible I might become a nun who kisses other nuns...”

— Rachel Cohn

86. “It still might be a shock. To realize you are just one story walking among millions.”

— Rachel Cohn

87. “I guess I’m nervous to be meeting you,” Lily said at long last, eyes still closed. “Likewise,” I assured her. “I find I very rarely live up to my words. And since you know me primarily through my words, there are oh so many ways I can disappoint.”

— Rachel Cohn

88. “We were people, and people had ways of finding each other.”

— Rachel Cohn

89. “How come princesses always have some huge flaw that can cause their downfall?”

— Rachel Cohn

90. “Nick is right, the Olsen twins do have a worrisome co-dependent relationship. I understand those bitches, though, I really do.”

— Rachel Cohn

91. “The reward is in the risk. You can’t stay hidden inside Grandpa’s overprotective cloak forever. You’ve seemed like you needed to grow out of that for a while. Mom and Dad going away, and the red notebook, these things just helped. Now it’s up to you to.”

— Rachel Cohn

92. “People who want things to be perfect are always impossible to please. But that doesn’t mean we should stop trying. Even.”

— Rachel Cohn

93. “How can you not be concerned that I might have cancer?” I ask. “I found a lump on my breast.” Touch it, Ely. Touch it. “Lie. Not only are you biting your lip, which you always do when you lie, but your mom told me about the alleged lump in the elevator this morning. The doctor said it was an overgrown pimple.” Monkeys!”

— Rachel Cohn

94. “I think it’s time to experience life outside the notebook.”

— Rachel Cohn

95. “I’m liking that I can throw any kind of sentence at her without worrying it’s too out there.”

— Rachel Cohn

96. “The humans create life, and senselessly cause death. For nothing.”

— Rachel Cohn

97. “I don’t think it’s a matter of ready-I mean, not in an all-the-way sense. You’re never completely ready-you just get to the point where you’re ready enough.”

— Rachel Cohn

98. “But whether or not you are here, you are here – because these words are for you, and they wouldn’t exist if you weren’t here in some way. This notebook is a strange instrument – the player doesn’t know the music until it’s being played.”

— Rachel Cohn

99. “Children frighten me. I mean, I appreciate them on a cute aesthetic level, but they’re very demanding and unreasonable creatures and often smell funny.”

— Rachel Cohn

100. “She doesn’t want the boy causing the distinction between “love” and “in love.”

— Rachel Cohn