Quotes from Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“It's bullshit to think of friendship and romance as being different. They're not. They're just variations of the same love. Variations of the same desire to be close.”
― Rachel Cohn, quote from Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“We always see our worst selves. Our most vulnerable selves. We need someone else to get close enough to tell us we’re wrong. Someone we trust.”
― Rachel Cohn, quote from Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“Things that matter are not easy. Feelings of happiness are easy. Happiness is not. Flirting is easy. Love is not. Saying you’re friends is easy. Being friends is not.”
― Rachel Cohn, quote from Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“It's a total lie to say there's only one person you're going to be with for the rest of your life. If you're lucky - and if you try really hard - there will always be more than one. ”
― Rachel Cohn, quote from Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“Just because a person is beautiful doesn't mean there's no soul beneath. Doesn't mean that person hasn't suffered like everyone else, doesn't mean they don't hope to still be a good human being in an awful world.”
― Rachel Cohn, quote from Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“There is no such thing as a soulmate…and who would want there to be? I don’t want half of a shared soul. I want my own damn soul.”

Ely in Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List Rachel Cohn and David Levithan”
― Rachel Cohn, quote from Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“I've never understood why looking hot had to be equated with sex and conquest. Whatever happened to anticipation, to courtship, to true love? Can't a person look hot and not have it mean something? Call me an old-fashioned Naomi bitch, but I'm holding out for true love. Even if it's an unattainable fantasy”
― Rachel Cohn, quote from Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“It's bullshit to think of friendship and romance as being different. They're not. They're just variations of the same love. Variations of the same desire to be close.”
― Rachel Cohn, quote from Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“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, quote from Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“Maybe your history just repeats and repeats until it batters you enough to snap the seams that hold you together”
― Rachel Cohn, quote from Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“How can you spend hours every day trying in small ways to figure out who you are, then have a near-stranger give you a sentence of yourself that says it better than you ever could?”
― Rachel Cohn, quote from Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“But I know the difference. Everyone else is a ghost. I exist here alone, stranded by choice. Deserted. ”
― Rachel Cohn, quote from Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“Life tells you to take the elevator, but love tells you to take the stairs.”
― Rachel Cohn, quote from Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“There's no such thing as a soulmate...and who would want there to be? I don't want half of a shared soul. I want my own damn soul.”
― Rachel Cohn, quote from Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“I know I should just leave. Just go. Because there's a point where a mistake turns into a big mistake, and I should probably come to my senses before I get there.”
― Rachel Cohn, quote from Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“Please may this not be a game. Please may this not be a game. Because if it’s a game, I know I’m going to lose.”
― Rachel Cohn, quote from Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“The complexity embedded in the different levels of meaning that go along with the words "I love you" ought to be a whole mindfuck of a video game”
― Rachel Cohn, quote from Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“There is something so intimate about saying the truth out loud. There is something so intimate about hearing the truth said. There is something so intimate about sharing the truth, even if you are not entirely sure what it means.”
― Rachel Cohn, quote from Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“No. No no no no. It is not easy. Things that matter are not easy. Feelings of happiness are easy. Happiness is not. Flirting is easy. Love is not. Saying you're friends is easy. Being friends is not.”
― Rachel Cohn, quote from Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“Why do you lie" I ask her.
"To block the truth."
Fair enough.
Naomi goes on. "Where did we get it in our heads that we need truth all the time? Sometimes lies are nice, you know? You don't have to know the truth all the time. It's too exhausting.”
― Rachel Cohn, quote from Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“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, quote from Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“People come to New York to be different, but I go to Starbucks to be the same.”
― Rachel Cohn, quote from Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“Dumped doesn't even begin to describe it. If you're going to use a trash metaphor, incinerated is more like it.”
― Rachel Cohn, quote from Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“You're giving up. You're slipping into being miserable and if you are being miserable, then it's all about you again. But it's not all about you. Love doesn't work that way.”
― Rachel Cohn, quote from Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“Friendship is love as much as any romance. And like any love, it’s difficult and treacherous and confusing. But in the moment when your knees touch, there’s nothing else you could ever want.”
― Rachel Cohn, quote from Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“Beauty’s not only skin deep. Just because a person is beautiful
doesn’t mean there’s no soul beneath. Doesn’t mean
that person hasn’t suffered like everyone else, doesn’t mean
they don’t hope to still be a good human being in an awful
world. (Gabriel)”
― Rachel Cohn, quote from Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“If we actually thought about every decision we made, we'd be paralyzed ... You have to decide which decisions you're actually going to make, and then you have to let the rest of them go.”
― Rachel Cohn, quote from Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“There was something about our silence that made me comfortable. He wasn't talking to me, but I didn't feel ignored. I felt we were part of the same moment, and it didn't need to be defined.”
― Rachel Cohn, quote from Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“Is that all we need? Can the way we say each other's names encompass all our history, all our love, all our fear, all our fights, all our reunions, all of what we know about each other, all of what we don't know?”
― Rachel Cohn, quote from Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

About the author

Popular quotes

“L: You want me just to be your... friend?

E: You want the truth? I think you're my guardian angel.

L: What?

E: Do you know what it's like to have someone crash into your life with no warning? When you landed in my office, I was like, Who the fuck is this? But you shook me up. You brought me back to life at a time when I was in limbo. You were just what I needed...
You're just what I need.

L: Well I need you too. So we're even.

E: No, you don't need me. You're doing just fine.

L: Ok. Maybe I don't need you. But... I want you.”
― Sophie Kinsella, quote from Twenties Girl

“Is it alright to believe in the future where everyone can live in happiness?”
― Hiromu Arakawa, quote from Fullmetal Alchemist, Volume 1

“Love can't mature in one room. It has to come out of the full sharing of everything: joys, aspirations, downfalls, all of it. That's the only real path to love.”
― Leon Uris, quote from Trinity

“It isn't the big troubles in life that require character. Anybody can rise to a crisis and face a crushing tragedy with courage, but to meet the petty hazards of the day with a laugh - I really think that requires spirit.
It's the kind of character that I am going to develop. I am going to pretend that all life is just a game which I must play as skillfully and fairly as I can. If I lose, I am going to shrug my shoulders and laugh - also if I win.”
― Jean Webster, quote from Daddy-Long-Legs

“Roman influence seeds itself, sprouting mighty oaks right through the modern forest of computers, digital disks, microviruses and space satellites.”
― Anne Rice, quote from Pandora

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.