Top 250 Rachel Cohn Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “What do I want for Christmas?” He looked thoughtful for a second, then said, “World peace?” “Not helpful!”

— Rachel Cohn

202. “I always made it my mission to like him, because somebody has to like the people no one else likes or the world would just be hopeless. And the best way to extract holiday cheer, I’ve found, is to spend time with the most curmudgeonly person you know, and their grump can’t help but force you into feeling good, because it gives you perspective and balance.”

— Rachel Cohn

203. “This is why I should consider breaking my straight-edge vow. Beer most certainly would help this situation. It probably couldn’t make it any worse. Basic.”

— Rachel Cohn

204. “Christmas could begin. Magic could happen.”

— Rachel Cohn

205. “Let’s make plans,” I ventured. And Sofia smiled and said, “No, let’s leave it to chance.”

— Rachel Cohn

206. “I think that reality has the distinct potential to completely suck, and the way to get around that is to step out of reality from time to time and find something a little more enjoyable with someone you completely, unadulteratedly.”

— Rachel Cohn

207. “I want to believe that, despite all evidence to the contrary, it is possible for anyone to find that one special person. That person to spend Christmas with or grow old with or just take a nice silly walk in Central Park with.”

— Rachel Cohn

208. “I didn’t want to tell Lily that I felt we’d all been duped by Plato and the idea of a soulmate. Just in case it turned out that she was mine.”

— Rachel Cohn

209. “Anyone who’s lived in Manhattan all his life always feels torn whenever he leaves it. There’s the satisfaction of breaking free, for a time. But that’s balanced heavily by the feeling of leaving your whole life behind, and to see it from a distance.”

— Rachel Cohn

210. “What’s the one thing we want when it comes to the people we love? Time. And what’s the scariest thing about how love goes? Time. The thing we want the most is the thing we fear the most, I guess. Time is going to run out. But in the meantime we have... everything.”

— Rachel Cohn

211. “It’s definitely worth something,” I said. “A lot. We still don’t know each other, right? And I’ll admit – I thought it might be best if we kept it all to the page, passed that notebook back and forth until we were ninety. But clearly that wasn’t meant to be. And who am I to blow against the wind?”

— Rachel Cohn

212. “You are an impossible sausage of adorable,” she pronounced.”

— Rachel Cohn

213. “The exhaustion of living was just too much for me.”

— Rachel Cohn

214. “The world was too full of wastrels and waifs, sycophants and spies – all of whom put words to the wrong use, who made everything that was said or written suspect.”

— Rachel Cohn

215. “We hadn’t vowed to write every day, and we hadn’t written every day. We hadn’t sworn to be true to each other, because there hadn’t been much to be true to.”

— Rachel Cohn

216. “Even the hard years have some reason for celebration.”

— Rachel Cohn

217. “It was Chaos on Glitter Ice. A massacre of librarians.”

— Rachel Cohn

218. “Why is it so much easier to talk to a stranger? Why do we feel we need that disconnect in order to connect?”

— Rachel Cohn

219. “You were thinking about the things you love, weren’t you?” “Yes.” “Good. The fact that it took so long for you to realize I was gone means you have a pretty solid foundation on which to build character.” “But I also have stress and doubt and fear.” “Most human beings do.” “But it overwhelms me at times.” “Just as it overwhelms most human beings. Life, dear Salinger, isn’t in the vanquishing, it’s in the navigation.”

— Rachel Cohn

220. “My family lives in that building now, along with Grandpa in the fourth-floor “penthouse” apartment, as he calls the converted space that was once an attic studio.”

— Rachel Cohn

221. “I had always felt that mittens were a few steps back on the evolutionary scale – why, I wondered, would we want to make ourselves into a less agile version of a lobster?”

— Rachel Cohn

222. “I know how to handle animals taking unauthorized expeditions.”

— Rachel Cohn

223. “Many years ago, he owned a neighborhood family grocery store on Avenue A in the East Village.”

— Rachel Cohn

224. “Grandpa has presided over the neighborhood as it went from low-income haven for immigrant families to yuppie enclave.”

— Rachel Cohn

225. “I felt a sense of longing for him such as I’ve never experienced in my lifetime for any person, or even for any pet.”

— Rachel Cohn

226. “She told me if I clean all the ashes out of the grate, then I’ll be able to help my sisters get ready for the ball.”

— Rachel Cohn

227. “You have to understand they’re operating from a place of fear, like Fox News viewers.”

— Rachel Cohn

228. “And I honestly like her about twenty times more now than I did when we were dating. But love needs to have a future.”

— Rachel Cohn

229. “I haven’t been able to reach her. And if I can’t reach her, there’s no way to keep her from being lost.”

— Rachel Cohn

230. “Two Boots makes weird Cajun-flavored pizzas. Not for me and my sensitive digestive system.”

— Rachel Cohn

231. “So even though it doesn’t seem like anything’s changed – ” “ – things change all the time, mostly in little ways. That’s how it goes, I guess.”

— Rachel Cohn

232. “You think fairy tales are only for girls? Here’s a hint – ask yourself who wrote them.”

— Rachel Cohn

233. “In the future, I decided I would tackle the solitude thing more enthusiastically, so long as solitude meant I could also walk in the park and pet a few dogs and pass them treats.”

— Rachel Cohn

234. “Why does he have a leash?” I asked. “A leash?” Julia looked confused. “A lead,” Mark said. “That’s what they call a leash here.”

— Rachel Cohn

235. “In all honesty, I should admit I have researched much of the scientific evidence refuting G-d’s existence, as a result of which I suspect I am a true believer in him the way I am in Santa. But I will unhesitatingly, and joyfully, O-Holy-Night his name between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve, with the mutual understanding that as of Christmas Day, once the presents are opened, my relationship with him goes on hiatus until I camp out for best viewing of the Macy’s parade the following year.”

— Rachel Cohn

236. “But we had never gone out of our way to reveal ourselves, either. Instead, we’d let the facts speak for themselves.”

— Rachel Cohn

237. “I’d always hoped but never believed that I could have such an adventure on my own. That I could own it. And love it. But it had happened. The notebook had made it so.”

— Rachel Cohn

238. “I can’t imagine anyone ever wanting to be alone with me that much.”

— Rachel Cohn

239. “I’m going to miss you, too,” she said. And then she slipped out of the moment, slipped out of the us, by adding, “I’m going to miss everyone.”

— Rachel Cohn

240. “From the time I was a baby, my mom took me to the library at least once a week. Librarians were like Mary Poppins to me. They always knew how to match a book to my mood or to whatever I was going through at the time. I could always find peace in books.”

— Rachel Cohn

241. “It was about the feeling, you know? She caused it in me, but it wasn’t about her. It was about my reaction, what I wanted to feel and then convinced myself that I felt, because I wanted it that bad. That illusion. It was love because I created it as love.”

— Rachel Cohn

242. “Langston has been in love. Twice. His first big romance ended so badly that he had to leave.”

— Rachel Cohn

243. “And It’s not entirely true that I’ve never been in love. I had a pet gerbil in first grade...”

— Rachel Cohn

244. “Your lightness,” I said, hardly knowing what I was saying. “It’s disarming.”

— Rachel Cohn

245. “I want that. The getting younger with each step, because of anticipation, in hope and belief.”

— Rachel Cohn

246. “I’m not sure I ever even liked Tal, much less loved him, and by the way, Tal, I believe the Palestinians should have their own state.”

— Rachel Cohn

247. “What I was sure of was that the bagpipes had begun to play “Fairytale of New York” – which is basically the best Christmas song ever written.”

— Rachel Cohn

248. “What’s of more concern: If I don’t shut down my brain soon, my imagination will take off so far about what could be with this guy, that nothing will ever be able to just be.”

— Rachel Cohn

249. “You can tell a lot about a person from the pages he or she chooses to journal on – I was strictly a college-ruled man myself, having no talent for illustration and a microscopic scrawl that made wide-ruled seem roomy.”

— Rachel Cohn

250. “As we walked into the store, we saw that we were catching the evening’s activity in medias res.”

— Rachel Cohn