Favorite Quotes

Here are some of my favorite quotes of all time: I'm going to keep adding to them as I remember them.


On being at Harvard Law:
"Oh yeah, you're excited to get into Harvard now, but wait until the random bouts of uncontrolled crying begin."
"It's just like high school...except here it's cool to be really smart."

On things that just make me smile
"The thot plickens!"
"I hope it reminds you of your brother...tall...and skinnnayyyyyyyyyyyy!"
"He should've known you weren't going to Ti-Ti the party."
"Let's hit it!"
"Who told her that was okay?"
"Say your prayers. Tell Jesus I said goodnight." "...Jesus, Stan says goodnight..."

On private jokes:
"Two teas, please."
"If his mom's a whore, does that make a difference?"
"...There's an ATM in here. Why is there an ATM in here?"
"*Scoff* One doesn't give God His blessing back."
"Imagine your dog eating ___'s cat. No mediation. And that statute's not good law anymore."
"I think it's a little more about the Crazy, and less about the spandex."

On catch phrases:
"Mistakes were made."
"Dead to me." (As in, 'where's such-in-such', 'I don't know. dead to me.')
"Really?"
"Dicta!"

On hitting the sauce:
"I woke up on my futon with no pants on, tangled up in a blanket."
"This morning was like Memento; your name is ___, you have a meeting at noon."
"Thank you for making sure I got home last night. I'm sorry for trying to snatch away from you and run across the street."


On (amusingly) ignorant comments: (disclaimer: none of these were said by me!)
"This is a birthday dinner and you're in a t-shirt."
"I got my white man back! I got my white man back!"
"There should be a code. If you give someone a black rose and a nickel, it means 'i don't like you'" (why's it gotta be black?)


On funny dialogue
A: Guess who's working at my firm this summer.
B: Jebus?
A: No, he's at the L.A. office.
B: He would.
~~~~~~~~~

A: I don't lie.
A: I omit.


On ridiculousness from class
"The country will be run by who??" "Big brother" "Oh. ...I thought she said Peanut Butter."
"...there are jurisdictions where they do do that kind of thing...." "Hee. She said 'doo-doo'"
"Sir, I only just emerged from the bathroom."

On dating/relationships:

"The Crazy could take ten years to come out."
"I would rather be an average-looking person who managed to cadge someone's affections than a hypothetically attractive one who spends each night alone for eternity."
"...It's amazing anyone ever gets together."
"If I stay in bed, I won't meet anyone I can eventually have sex with."
"You think it (love) happens all the time because you see it all around you. But really it's quite rare." *takes a sip of her drink*
"I'm no one's 'one-of-many'; I am always the main event."
"You're like the force that bends the other things around it out of their normal shape."
"It's like in crim - you have to interpret what he says thorugh the eyes of the reasonable, crazy person."
"Some people do things to distract themselves til 'the one' comes along. Some can't settle for anything less."
"Well, what is a 'nice guy'? A 'nice' guy just means they're charming. That's their thing they're good at; charm. It doesn't mean they have any kind of relationship skills."
"No, we can't be friends after he caused me all that trouble; that's like holding onto your Civil Procedure book for leisure reading."

On being hurt:
"It's hard to let go of hope when you let yourself hope so rarely."
"Be gentle with yourself." (Mama tells me this when I call her and I'm sad. 'Just relax today; be gentle with yourself.')
"All rocks cry sometimes; even rocks take a break and hum spirituals."

On getting over it:
"At the time, I thought it all happened because he's not the one. As opposed to he's not the one because of what happened. You know?"
"You have to stand like Jesus! Vulnerable to the world. Even when people stab you."
"...she decided to become
a woman
and even though
he refused to be a man,
she decided it was
all right."


On growing up
"You did a serious 'ugly duckling', Audrey. You should go on Oprah or something." - My brother
"When you're deciding what to do, 'don't just look for what the world needs. Do what makes you come alive - because the world needs people who are alive.'"

On friendship
"*Sigh* I wish she would stop flirting with him, because if his girlfriend notices and tries to fight her we'll have to have her back while we're in public. But when we get home, I'd be like 'what's wrong with you?!?'"
"I hope you're proud of me, Stan." "I am always proud of you."

'Irrational' is not a dirty word

I am artistic. I am one of those people. I can't paint, and I'm not a dancer. But some of my happiest moments are witnessing the creation or performance of those mediums of art. I'm one of those sit-on-the-beach-and-watch-the-sunset-and-then-write-a-poem-about-it kinda people. I love reading beautiful words that capture how some experience made me feel. Music makes me feel like I'm flying, and if I can contribute to its creation with my voice - oh wow, I am a happy girl.

I feel intensely; I sometimes cry thinking about things that didn't even happen to me. Just thinking about a story my mom told me from when she was younger, or something hurtful that happened to a friend can make me very sad. I've watched documentaries and broken down crying in public. *sigh* I really don't like crying in public.... But what can I do? It's who I am. But I can also take a walk some days when even something small has made me happy - sometimes just the fact that I bought myself some especially beautiful lilies - and feel like the sun is shining just for me. I might be thinking of something a friend said recently, or a conversation with mom and laugh out loud in sheer pleasure. Strangers may think I'm crazy. But what can I do? It's who I am. I have pain, and I feel it; I can't pretend and make it go away. I have happiness and I can feel it shooting out of every pore. I have moments of stillness and reflection, too. Yeah it sucks to hurt so deeply when I'm hurt, but it makes the other side of those tears so much sweeter once I've come through it. I embarrass myself sometimes by how I allow myself to be hurt by people and things in my life, but I'm forgiving myself of that. It only makes it harder not to accept who I am. I'm going to be wrong about people sometimes, but I can't blame myself for wanting to believe in someone I liked or cared about. I've learned from those experiences, and all I can do is not allow myself to be treated badly once I am aware - but I can't start to think that I can pre-empt every potential hurt. I can’t; I'm going to get hurt sometimes. I am not happy about this realization, but trying constantly to protect myself from it is exhausting - and ineffective! The important thing is to keep moving forward, and to keep taking a chance on people sometimes. I'm going to feel sad about things - our environment, society, my place in this world - and I'm going to tear up in the grocery store sometimes because that is who I am. It is not rational. I wouldn't want to always be; the most beautiful things in this world are driven by irrational emotions. Loving someone isn't rational. Who in their right mind would let themselves be completely vulnerable to another human being knowing how imperfect we all are? If we reasoned out everything in our minimal capacity as human beings to understand, there would be no room for faith. Faith in other people, faith in God, faith in ourselves. If I wanted to rely on statistics and logic, a black girl raised in a single-parent home in Chicago wouldn't be where I am. But God brought me nonetheless. It wasn't logic that made my mom make a way to take care of my brother and me by herself, finish her graduate degree and still make time to take us to museums and read to us at night. Honestly, I can't find a logical reason for how she was actually able to do that. And furthermore, I can't find the logic in her trying. She tried to do the logically impossible, but make it a possible and definite reality anyway. Trust isn't rational. Not when you've been betrayed and hurt repeatedly. But you can't stop trusting everyone.

I'm going to let myself see a cookie and laugh because of the joke I have with Stan that just popped into my head, and I'll laugh until my cheeks hurt if I feel it. I'm going to let myself sit at my desk and cry for whoever it is that has touched me that night, and I'll even give myself permission to cry just for me. And I'll let myself feel every quiet moment in between where I just watch the snow fall outside my window and feel the warmth of my blanket. Because when I decide I want to live my life to its fullest, I've already accepted that I can't always be rational. And that's just fine by me.

On Instincts

The other morning I woke up to a loud, rhythmic bed-creaking sound coming through the wall from my neighbor's apartment. It was not the first time. Glancing at the clock, I noticed that it was 7 am. My instinct was to yell loudly "I can hear you having sex!" repeatedly and bang on the wall like a crazy person until they stopped. But I quickly realized that would only make me look ridiculous, and make our exchanges by the mailboxes awkward and uncomfortable. Plus it would've really hurt my hand.

Sometimes you can't go with your instincts.

While it was clear to me that I shouldn't make things worse by screaming through my bedroom wall, it's not always so easy to know what's a good instinct and what's not. In the past, I have had a lot of trouble when it came to this and friendships. But now, through a combination of holding back in my friendships at first (yay for building walls!), and actually having a few good people who I can really bare my soul to, I have learned how to let friendships form or pass away depending on how life works out. But romantic relationships are different. I've never had a good one, so it's not like friendship where I can say "This is what a good friendship looks like" and act accordingly. I have no frame of reference. And while I've grown when it comes to being able to trust people as friends, I'm still pretty wary of guys, which makes it even harder to trust my instincts with them. Because with them it comes down to the question of whether it's truly instinct, or just fear.

Every time something has gone wrong with a guy in the past 6 years, I've felt like I saw it coming. I had a dream the night before I discovered my ex cheated on me. I guess God was like, '*Sigh* It's time for you to know. You're not going to find out any other way *shakes head*. So I'm just going to spell it out for you'. Other times were more subtle. It was just a pause in a conversation, or a tone of voice, or an excuse that could have been completely valid that just didn't sit right. Or a pat-hug. HA. (I hate pat-hugs) Friends would tell me I was 'Girling'; stressing too hard about nothing. But then it happened. Herein lies the problem. I kinda have a sense when it's about to go down.

But I wonder…do I really?? I am constantly aware of the potential for disaster when I date a guy these days. Even if nothing is wrong yet. It drives my friends crazy, but what can I say? The last time I wasn't constantly aware was in my college relationship and whoooooa did that teach me a lesson. And my experiences since then have affirmed that you have to be prepared; don’t be surprised at what's coming out of nowhere. I know now that no matter WHAT's happening right now - no matter how cute the email or text is that I just got, or how much we laughed or marveled at *gasp* how much we have in common, or how sincere his eyes seemed when I looked up at him and smiled - tomorrow it could all be different. My friends ask if I have plans for the weekend, and I can't just say 'yeah'; it's 'yea. unless he doesn't call' or 'yea, if we're still dating' or 'yea...if he's still interested' and they think that I am ridiculous. They ask, 'what about you, what about if you're still interested'. I say, I'm steady. I know who I like, who I don't like. And if I don't know, I'm figuring it out pretty fast. And I realize that my desire to take things slow is not so much so I can figure out what I want, as much as it is for me to figure out if the other person is crazy. I expect the Crazy to come out at any moment. And I want to be as far away emotionally as possible when it does. My friends marvel at how I can go around thinking that so much could change in just a day. And on the occasions where a friend has been able to get me to think that maybe I am just stressing unnecessarily and being silly….I give it 48 hours. Tops. Then I have to call them to share the newest let-down news of the un-dateable guy who was merely dressing up and playing the role of someone I could actually like, and they don't know what to say. I mumble ‘…see? …I called it…’ through my disappointment. The sad part is it doesn't make it feel any better to have been right. But adding a caveat to every answer to any question about the guy I'm dating/seeing so that I can't ever say "Yes. I have a lunch date tomorrow. Tomorrow at 1pm, I will be at lunch." ...doesn't sound like instinct. Sounds like fear. But what do you call fear...when it keeps coming true?

A new theory

I've got this new theory that I'm still trying to flesh out completely, but the gist is that, just like one goes through stages on the way to acceptance of a loss (denial, anger, etc), there are stages one goes through after being rejected.

The most immediate one, for me at least, is Relief. At least you know and don't have to waste time or energy on someone who's not interested - and you can go on to find someone else, or at least not worry about it anymore. However, this feeling is short lived (for the moment) and is quickly overcome by feelings of Embarrassment. It can last a long time for some, but the more fortunate of us are able to rid ourselves of it with just a night's rest (and the most fortunate of us have teddy bears that provide immeasurable comfort and support).

Another stage, one that can easily overlap with the Embarrassment Stage, is Sadness. Mixed in with those feelings of wanting to hide under your pillow (so you don't have to remember that awkward look on someone's face, or think about how uncomfortable that conversation just was, etc.) can also be a sadness that mourns the loss of whatever you imagined could have happened had your interest been returned. This stage can be mitigated by finding out early on if someone's not interested before you get too far along emotionally. It's pretty logical, actually. It's human nature for feelings to increase over time, so if you wait a year there's going to be a much more difficult Sadness stage because you have a lot more hopes to mourn the loss of. I've become of a fan of getting it out of the way earlier on - mostly because I don't like spending that kind of energy on anyone who's not spending it on me, but also because the Sadness stage can be the hardest one to get through so whatever option shortens that stage for me is most desirable. A warning, however; embarrassment is no picnic. And shorten the length of life on 'sadness' and expect to feel the embarrassment more keenly since there's nothing else to distract you in that stage from what you've just done (but again, if you have a bear named marshmallow - you'll be fine.)

The next stage is all about holding on to that embarrassment and dragging it around with you and into social situations. You guessed it - Awkwardness. Good news (and bad news, in a way) about this one, though - it is what you make of it. You can dwell in it as long as you let yourself, or choose to feel empowered by the fact that you took a shot and (hopefully) handled the situation and subsequent rejection with grace and let the embarrassment go. It seems like a lot crappy stages and feelings to go through but, in the final stage, you get to genuinely fill yourself with the air of relief that you only got a quick breath of before all the shit went down. It's there, trust me, it comes. And if you keep a perspective, you can actually surprise yourself and find yourself back at relief as soon as you'd hoped ('cause everyone hopes for a speedy recovery.)

And so I set out to see if there's a better way to handle these kinds of things then (as I would've done as little as a year ago) to just spend months and months hoping they notice that you tried to look especially pretty for them and said witty things in their presence. (i mean, who has the patience for that?) And I submit to you all that there is a better way. Recognize that your affections are valuable, and find out if the person you want to share it with wants to share theirs with you. Giving away affection to someone who may not be interested is draining - so find out if the person wants to value your valuables and, if not, find someone else who does. Come on LMK, I'm talking to you!

And on an unrelated note - I love Lola and the fact that all of the affections I give to her she returns. Knowing her has been so rewarding - especially tonight.