Romantic Comedy

Aren’t we all just looking for someone to talk about everything with? Someone worth the effort of telling our stories and opinions to, whose stories and opinions we actually want to hear?

It was a belated realization to have, but it occurred to me that perhaps this was how grown-up conversations worked—not that your communication didn’t falter, but that you both made good-faith attempts to rectify things after it had.

Sometimes when I speak, I feel like I’m writing dialogue for the character of myself. I’m impersonating a normal human when really I’m a confused freak.

All of which was to say that the sketches I’d written over the years about the absurdity and arbitrariness of beauty standards for women had arisen not from my clear-eyed renunciation of them but from my resentment at their hold on me.

If you're our age and single, dating kind of has to be an act of reckless optimism, right? The triumph of hope over experience?

Why would I want to stew in my aloneness?” “Because you’re scared.” “What am I scared of?” “Getting hurt. Knowing another person really well and another person knowing you really well. Feelings you can’t make fun of. Interactions that go on for long enough that they maybe turn a little awkward or a little tedious instead of ending after ten minutes with a zinger.

You know the advice about how you should always play tennis with people better than you? When I'm talking to you, I'm a funnier and smarter version of myself because you're funny and smart.

Perhaps, as was often the case with human interactions, it meant nothing.

Could it be that Noah was one of those rare guys who didn’t essentially dislike or mock women, and who also didn’t ignore our existence, and who also didn’t see us primarily as objects of lust? That he was weirdly, disarmingly fine with us?

Oh come on—as if there’s a clear distinction between real and fake for any of us. Aren’t we all performing the role of ourselves?

I want to give you affirmation. But if I don't give you enough, you should ask for it." "Isn't asking for affirmation — I don't know — needy?" He looked perplexed. "Isn't the point of something like this that the other person tries to meet your needs, and you try to meet theirs?" I was quiet for a few seconds before saying, "Is this what they teach in therapy? Because it's blowing my mind.

I don’t get why you’d write scripts for romantic comedies if you think romance is cheesy nonsense.” “That’s just it, though,” I said. “I don’t write from a point of clarity. I write out of confusion.

Because my mother hadn’t been an ostentatious or performative person, it had taken me a long time, until college really, to realize how smart and funny she was, and how generously compassionate.

I once heard a smart person point out that it’s hard to determine where the dividing line is between cheesiness and acceptable emotional extravagance.” He grinned again. “I didn’t tell you at the time, but I know exactly where the line is. When it’s happening to other people, it’s cheesy. When it’s happening to you, it’s wonderful.

And if I was looking at that, would I pick you out from everyone else and say, ‘That’s the most gorgeous woman I’ve ever seen’? If I’m being honest, no. But human beings aren’t static images. We’re dynamic and kinetic, and it’s like I said before—right away, I wanted to talk to you, and every time I’ve talked to you since I’ve always wanted to keep talking to you.

Well," I said, "I once heard a smart person point out that it's hard to determine where the dividing line is between cheesiness and acceptable emotional extravagance." He grinned again. "I didn't tell you at the time, but I know exactly where that line is. When it's happening to other people, it's cheesy. When it's happening to you, it's wonderful.

His expression became both very tender and very amused, as if there were an excellent inside joke between us, and he tilted his head to the right and looked at me with a focused kind of sweetness and warmth.

real worst-case scenario was that they’d know me in a way I didn’t want to be known by them. Even I wasn’t sure if my in-person self (a mild-mannered woman of average intelligence and attractiveness) or my scripts (willfully raging sketches about sexism and bodily functions) reflected my real self—or if I had a real self, or if anyone did. But I suspected that much of my writing emerged from this tension or lack of integration; I believed the perceptions undergirding my sketches arose from my being invisible or at least underestimated, including being mistaken for someone nicer than I was.

Isn't the goal to live with out demons, not to expect them to go away?

Do you know what sapiosexual means? 'No.' 'It means being attracted to someone's brain.' 'I am attracted to your brain. But I'm also attracted to the rest of you.

I'm not usually that quick-witted. You bring out that side of me. ... When I'm talking to you, I'm a funnier and smarter version of myself because you're funny and smart.

After being married to a guy who didn't like what made me me, and being friends with a guy who adored me but didn't want to make out with me, I don't trust my own instincts. Both situations scrambled my brain, and I know it's a small sample size, but I decided to be done with that shit. And now our emails are scrambling me again.

I don't like cucumber because the best part of a cucumber tastes like the worst part of a watermelon.

human beings aren’t static images. We’re dynamic and kinetic,

If this was all I ever got, it would be the best thing that had ever happened to me, and if this was all I ever got, I’d never stop wanting more of it.

Another of my pet peeves is that the female characters used to be all sort of cutesy, like having flour on their nose after they baked cookies and not knowing it. And now they're all a mess, like waking up really hungover and getting fired. I want to create characters who aren't flawless but also aren't ridiculous or incompetent at life.

Wasn’t this more than I’d ever imagined I could wish for, that a kind, thoughtful, smoking-hot man would think I was terrifyingly, awesomely perceptive? That he understood how neurotic I was, and didn’t seem to mind? That he saw neediness not as annoying but as normal? Hadn’t it all seemed so unlikely that I’d genuinely made peace with never finding someone like Noah except perhaps in the pages of a screenplay I wrote?

Having you here has been even better than fun and great. When we're hanging out by the pool and when we're watching a movie and above all when we're making love, and I already know you'll mock me for saying making love, but that's what it is--all of that is amazing.

Just to be clear,” I said, “I do lead a life of quiet desperation. I wouldn’t want to be friends with anyone who doesn’t, or anyone who isn’t filled with ambivalence, because I assume they’d be incredibly shallow. But I'm sure I’d be ten times more quietly desperate if I were living in the suburbs with a two-car garage.