Top 250 Rachel Cohn Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, they sang.”

— Rachel Cohn

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

— Rachel Cohn

203. “And I find myself saying, “It wasn’t really about her.” And finding it’s true. “What do you mean?” Norah asks. “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.” Norah.”

— Rachel Cohn

204. “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

205. “But Langston repeated, “Lily, you just don’t understand. What you need is someone to keep you occupied. You need a boyfriend.”

— Rachel Cohn

206. “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

207. “Death Cab for Cutie’s “Transatlanticism.”

— Rachel Cohn

208. “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

209. “Maybe it isn’t that we’re supposed to find the pieces and put them back together. Maybe we’re the pieces.”

— Rachel Cohn

210. “He was obstinate in the way that only truly miserable people can be obstinate.”

— Rachel Cohn

211. “Their first date was at the symphony. How mean can a guy be who likes Mozart? I hope, at least.”

— Rachel Cohn

212. “We’re to write our letters to Father Christmas.” “To be burned up in the chimney?” Gem asked. “One of my favorite British traditions.”

— Rachel Cohn

213. “But there was something so empty about the prospect of a Christmas Day without opening presents.”

— Rachel Cohn

214. “I’d never thought a single sentence could turn me off so decisively from both making love and playing the piano, but there it was.”

— Rachel Cohn

215. “People who want things to be perfect are always impossible to please. But that doesn’t mean we should stop trying. Even if their expectations aren’t correct, their instincts.”

— Rachel Cohn

216. “You don’t know who Nicholas Sparks is?” Dash asked. I shook my head. “Please don’t ever find out,” he said.”

— Rachel Cohn

217. “She went to take the notebook, but Boris beat her to it. “Bad girl!” she chided. “I’m pretty sure Boris is a boy,” I said. “Oh, I know,” Mrs. Basil E. assured me. “I just like to keep him confused.”

— Rachel Cohn

218. “I always hoped that after the prince found Cinderella and they rode away in thier magnificent carriage, after a few miles she turned to him and said “could you drop me off down the road, please? Now that I’ve finally escaped my life of horrific abuse, I’d like to see something of the world, you know? Maybe backpack across Europe or Asia? I’ll catch back up with you later, Prince, once I’ve found my own way.”

— Rachel Cohn

219. “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.” “And escape?”

— Rachel Cohn

220. “And once I’m pretending that’s the truth, I figure it might as well be the truth.”

— Rachel Cohn

221. “Because I don’t want to,” I said. “Not because of the way she is now – I know that’s not what she’s like. There was no way it was going to be as easy as the notebook. I get that now.”

— Rachel Cohn

222. “I had a hard time picturing my father in high school. My father never gave any indication that he’d once been young. Gem, on the other hand, wore all of the ages she’d ever been at the same time. I could trust that.”

— Rachel Cohn

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

— Rachel Cohn

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

— Rachel Cohn

225. “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

226. “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

227. “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

228. “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

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

— Rachel Cohn

230. “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

231. “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

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

— Rachel Cohn

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

— Rachel Cohn

234. “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

235. “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

236. “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

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

— Rachel Cohn

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

— Rachel Cohn

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

— Rachel Cohn

240. “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

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

— Rachel Cohn

242. “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

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

— Rachel Cohn

244. “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

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

— Rachel Cohn

246. “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

247. “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

248. “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

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

— Rachel Cohn

250. “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