Quotes from The Wonder Spot

“You smell like a bar," he said.
I thought, You smell like a library. But I wanted to have sex right then, so I said, "You smell like a poem.”
― Melissa Bank, quote from The Wonder Spot

“You did the best you could," and she seemed to believe I had.

I said, "I've just been going through the motions," using the expression my father had after he'd watched my first tennis lesson.

"Sweetie," she said, "that's what a lot of life is.”
― Melissa Bank, quote from The Wonder Spot

“i realize i will never hear from dena again, and i will never call her. it gives me a chill. it is a strange thing to end a friendship, even if you know it's what you want. it's like a death; all of a sudden your experience of a person become finite. ”
― Melissa Bank, quote from The Wonder Spot

“He gives me a kiss that barely touches my lips – it means nothing or everything.
After he’s gone, I think, Happy birthday to me.
Jack says, ‘That was the guy?’
‘That was him.’
Jake shakes his head.
‘What?’
‘He’s not for you,’ he says.
I say, ‘How do you know?’ but what I mean is, How do you know?
‘He’s like Ashley Wilkes,’ he says. ‘Any one of these guys is Rhett-ier than he is.’
Again, I ask my benignly inflected, ‘How do you know?’
‘How do I know?’ he says, tackling me into a bear hug. ‘How do I know? I know, that’s how I know.”
― Melissa Bank, quote from The Wonder Spot

“With so much sky and so much river, you couldn't help seeing the big picture. It was what you already knew, but crowding into the subway or rushing to a movie, you only saw it for a second, and close up. Now I took a good long look. I'd always heard you couldn't see stars in Manhattan because of all the lights. But here they all were. Here was my night in shining armor.”
― Melissa Bank, quote from The Wonder Spot

“She seems sort of lost.'

I thought, Lost how? How am I lost? Suddenly I felt lost.”
― Melissa Bank, quote from The Wonder Spot

“Up until that moment, I'd been at the earliest stage of love, when you feel it will turn you into the better person you want to be. Now, his gentle voice and sage advice took me to a later stage: I felt I needed to pretend to be a better person than I was so he'd keep loving me. This was hard because it made me hate him.”
― Melissa Bank, quote from The Wonder Spot

“It scares me. But then I get this big feeling, simple but exalted: He's like me, just with different details.”
― Melissa Bank, quote from The Wonder Spot

“The women are young, young, young, liquidy and sweet-looking; they are batter, and I am the sponge cake they don't know they'll become. I stand here, a lone loaf, stuck to the pan. ”
― Melissa Bank, quote from The Wonder Spot

“It was the opposite of love, and yet it wasn't love I was opposed to but the murmurs that said, This is your chance, which seemed less like the promise of a door opening than the threat of one sealing shut.”
― Melissa Bank, quote from The Wonder Spot

“He never told me that he loved me."
"Some men don't," she says. "Some men say it all the time and don't mean it."
I recognize myself in the latter category, not with Demetri but with one of his predecessors. I sometimes said "I love you" to Josh because I was afraid I didn't; toward the end, I hardly said it at all, and when I did I meant, I WISH I LOVED YOU.”
― Melissa Bank, quote from The Wonder Spot

“When he takes off his shirt, I see that his shoulders are narrow and his chest almost hairless and almost concave. For a second I’m disappointed but right away I think, Grow up; this is the chest of a husband.”
― Melissa Bank, quote from The Wonder Spot

“The elevator door opens right into the loft. I was counting on those extra few seconds of hallway before facing the party, the party we are now part of and in, a party with people talking and laughing and having a party time. I think, I am a solid, trying to do a liquid's job.”
― Melissa Bank, quote from The Wonder Spot

“I said, "What's your goal in life?" and winced at how corny and earnest I sounded.
He looked away. He thought. "I guess I'm trying to become a better man than the one I'm hardwired to be.”
― Melissa Bank, quote from The Wonder Spot

“Well," I said, "I have to go."
He said, "Can I call you?"
I waited a long time before answering, though not, of course, as long as he'd made me wait. I let him stand there with the question in the air while I took a good long look at him, let him stand there while I stepped to the street and raised my arm for a cab. At exactly that moment, as though dispatched by some god I didn't really believe in anymore - the god of drama or god of perfect things - or maybe by my own fairy god god, a cab came. I got in, and closed the door.”
― Melissa Bank, quote from The Wonder Spot

“By late August, I’m on my second sublet, and I’ve been working as a copywriter long enough to know I’m not good at it. I seem to be reliving the life I had when I was twenty-two, but I’m about to run twenty-eight, which feels like the opposite of twenty-two.”
― Melissa Bank, quote from The Wonder Spot

“Later, lying in bed, I wonder if Dena knows about her father. I decide that she probably does, and I imagine how I would feel if I knew that my father was unfaithful to my mother.
Then I remember Richard, and I think that marriage might not mean much to Dena. I can't really blame her: She learned about marriage from her parents, just as I did from mine. For all I know, sleeping with Richard is just Dena's way of trying not to be her mother.”
― Melissa Bank, quote from The Wonder Spot

“When I could talk, I said, "I don't know what I did wrong."
Dena sighed, "You care too much.”
― Melissa Bank, quote from The Wonder Spot

“I never expected anyone in my family to change, and especially not my father, who changed first and most profoundly: He died.”
― Melissa Bank, quote from The Wonder Spot

“He didn't remember because he'd seen thousands of little fish hundreds of times, and because it didn't mean to him what it had to me.”
― Melissa Bank, quote from The Wonder Spot

“I want him to tell my why, but he doesn't say anything. It seems possible that Matthew is gay and possible that he isn't; possible that he is just a little more afraid than the rest of us and possible that he is much more; it even seems possible that what he has with Dena is bigger or deeper or more important than anything else is to him.
I don't know, But i no longer believe, as I did that last afternoon at the lake, that my many, many flaws are what prevented Matthew from wanting a life with me. It seems more likely that it is his flaw that he can't or won't love anyone-- and that he is indiscriminate in his unlove.”
― Melissa Bank, quote from The Wonder Spot

“There are things that two people say in the middle of the night That don't make sense to a third at breakfast.”
― Melissa Bank, quote from The Wonder Spot

“He's losing weight," I say. "He doesn't sleep anymore." It occurs to me that this is how cults weaken the will of initiates.
Robert says, "It sounds to me like he's in love," and adds that the world's most coveted state is characterized by unrelieved insecurity and almost constant pain.”
― Melissa Bank, quote from The Wonder Spot

“I remembered my father's speech about what Jack was capable of and wasn't; he'd said, IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH HOW MUCH JACK LOVES YOU. I thought about all the girls he'd stopped loving; it was like he had a timer, and at a certain point it buzzed.”
― Melissa Bank, quote from The Wonder Spot

“It reminded me of how I’d felt applying to college. Night after night, I sat with my father in his study while he read aloud from Baron’s. He’d read the name of the college, the number of men and the number of women, and a description in guidebook prose; then he’d say, ‘How does that sound?’ and I’d think, Sounds just like the last one.
It took me a few nights to realize that my father was reading only the colleges that I had some chance of getting into – not Brown but Bowling Green; not Wesleyan but Ohio Wesleyan; not Williams or Smith, but William Smith. Until that moment, it hadn’t occurred to me that my grades and test scores over the years were anything more than individual humiliations; I hadn’t realized that one day all of them would add up and count against me.”
― Melissa Bank, quote from The Wonder Spot

“when i felt bobby staring at me, i looked up. our eyes met, and he held my gaze; he held my gaze like he was holding me, and i held him as though holding him. then he looked away, he was gone and it was over - a one-minute stand. ”
― Melissa Bank, quote from The Wonder Spot

“Jack knew how to make women fall in love with him, but that didn't exactly qualify him as a guidance counselor.”
― Melissa Bank, quote from The Wonder Spot

“As ever, Sue was on the phone, and I could tell by her posture - she was half laying on the desk - that she was crying. I knew this was no distress but joy: She always cried when her boyfriend admitted that he was a complete idiot.”
― Melissa Bank, quote from The Wonder Spot

“Well, for one thing," she said, "her knowledge of punctuation begins and ends with her own beauty mark.”
― Melissa Bank, quote from The Wonder Spot

“Unfortunately, we all had to face that I was not the person they wanted me to be.”
― Melissa Bank, quote from The Wonder Spot

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