Sloane Crosley

Quotations

  • “Brits and Americans have hundreds of different phrases for the same thing. Luckily, it’s usually a source of amusement rather than frustration. A flashlight by any other name is still a torch. My personal favourite is ‘fairy lights,’ which we boringly refer to as ‘Christmas lights.’” -Sloane Crosley

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  • “In New York, if you weigh under 200 pounds and decline so much as a cookie at a co-worker’s party, women will flock to your side, assuring you of your appealing physique. This is how skittish we are about the dangers of anorexia and the pressures of body image.” -Sloane Crosley

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  • “The reason that war is such a fascinating subject for writers is because it’s a revealer. Put a bunch of people in an adrenaline-fuelled, life-or-death situation and their fundamental behaviours are exposed, the scrim is taken away and the motivations behind each personality come out to play.” -Sloane Crosley

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  • “It’s funny. People often compare me to other humor essayists. They’re usually quite nice comparisons I will accept those gladly. But I am always sort of appalled at the idea of being lumped with other, more chick-y female writers. And the truth is probably that neither comparison is accurate.” -Sloane Crosley

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  • “Air travel is the safest form of travel aside from walking even then, the chances of being hit by a public bus at 30,000 feet are remarkably slim. I also have no problem with confined spaces. Or heights. What I am afraid of is speed.” -Sloane Crosley

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  • “Personal technology has given us the freedom of being able to do whatever we want – and in the case of celebrities and athletes, whomever they want. But it can also serve as a humiliation jetpack.” -Sloane Crosley

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  • “My mother is a special education teacher but also an artist, and my father an advertising executive. They are about as wacky as you can get without being alcoholics.” -Sloane Crosley

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  • “My grandmother was a kind of Scarsdale, New York, society woman, best known in her day as the author of the 1959 book ‘Growing Your Own Way: An Informal Guide for Teen-Agers’ – this despite being a person whose parenting style made Joan Crawford’s wire hangers look like pool noodles.” -Sloane Crosley

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  • “If I go into a sandwich shop or anywhere that features ‘Today’s specials’ on a chalkboard more than 10 feet away, I have to ask for a printed menu. I smile at people I don’t know on the street and ignore those I do. When at home, I often find myself grabbing my ‘back-up’ glasses…

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  • “The year most of my high school friends and I got our driver’s permits, the coolest thing one could do was stand outside after school and twirl one’s car keys like a lifeguard whistle. That jingling sound meant freedom and power.” -Sloane Crosley

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  • “A pet store is a celebration of dogs’ existence and an explosion of options. About cats, a pet store seems to say, ‘Here, we couldn’t think of anything else.’ Cats are the Hanukkah of the animal world in this way. They are feted quietly and happily by a minority, but there’s only so much hoopla…

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  • “Ah, the power of two. There’s nothing quite like it. Especially when it comes to paying utility bills, parenting, cooking elaborate meals, purchasing a grown-up bed, jumping rope and lifting heavy machinery. The world favours pairs. Who wants to waste the wood building an ark for singletons?” -Sloane Crosley

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  • “My personality, when tasked with creating meals, goes something like this: Is there a way we can make this more difficult? Because let’s do that. I don’t mean to complicate things. It’s just – why buy pre-packaged potato salad when you can spend your morning boiling potatoes and flipping out because there’s no dill in…

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  • “There’s already a marriage clock, a career clock, a biological clock. Sometimes being a woman feels like standing in the lobby of a hotel, looking at the dials depicting every time zone in the world behind the front desk – except they all apply to you, and all at once.” -Sloane Crosley

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  • “I was diagnosed with a severe temporal spatial deficit, a learning disability that means I have zero spatial relations skills. It was official: I was a genius trapped in an idiot’s body.” -Sloane Crosley

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  • “It’s funny. People often compare me to other humor essayists. They’re usually quite nice comparisons I will accept those gladly. But I am always sort of appalled at the idea of being lumped with other, more chick-y female writers. And the truth is probably that neither comparison is accurate.” -Sloane Crosley

    (click to view listing)

  • “If I go into a sandwich shop or anywhere that features ‘Today’s specials’ on a chalkboard more than 10 feet away, I have to ask for a printed menu. I smile at people I don’t know on the street and ignore those I do. When at home, I often find myself grabbing my ‘back-up’ glasses…

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  • “Our culture’s obsession with vintage objects has rendered us unable to separate history from nostalgia. People want heart. They want a chaser of emotion with their aesthetics.” -Sloane Crosley

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  • “Alaska is what happens when Willy Wonka and the witch from Hansel and Gretel elope, buy a place together upstate, renounce their sweet teeth, and turn into health fanatics.” -Sloane Crosley

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  • “Since graduation, I have measured time in 4-by-5-inch pieces of paper, four days on the left and three on the right. Every social engagement, interview, reading, flight, doctor’s appointment, birthday and dry-cleaning reminder has been handwritten between metal loops.” -Sloane Crosley

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  • “It’s funny. People often compare me to other humor essayists. They’re usually quite nice comparisons I will accept those gladly. But I am always sort of appalled at the idea of being lumped with other, more chick-y female writers. And the truth is probably that neither comparison is accurate.” -Sloane Crosley

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  • “The year most of my high school friends and I got our driver’s permits, the coolest thing one could do was stand outside after school and twirl one’s car keys like a lifeguard whistle. That jingling sound meant freedom and power.” -Sloane Crosley

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  • “I was the youngest of my entire family so you are tap-dancing to try to get the attention of your older cousins. I really hit my social stride in 6th grade, but before that I was a pretty big dork. You learn how to be amusing and how to work for it.” -Sloane Crosley

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  • “I have a disproportionate amount of faith in the goodness of the world and that everything will actually work out okay.” -Sloane Crosley

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  • “For me, titles are either a natural two-second experience or stressful enough to give you an ulcer. If they don’t pop out perfect on the first try, they can be really hard to repair. Or, worse, if the author thinks they pop out perfect, but the publishing house does not agree, it’s difficult to shift…

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  • “My mother is a special education teacher but also an artist, and my father an advertising executive. They are about as wacky as you can get without being alcoholics.” -Sloane Crosley

    (click to view listing)

  • “The year most of my high school friends and I got our driver’s permits, the coolest thing one could do was stand outside after school and twirl one’s car keys like a lifeguard whistle. That jingling sound meant freedom and power.” -Sloane Crosley

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  • “The Queen of Crafts herself, Martha Stewart, and I have the same birthday. I prefer to think it’s the glue-gun wielding, perfect-tart-producing Martha and not the copper pan-throwing, jail-going Martha. But I suppose if I am going to share a calendar square with some of Martha, I have to share it with all of Martha.”…

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  • “You can’t possibly fathom the ins and outs of a prepubescent beauty treatment until you’ve felt the strange but exhilarating tingle of a cottage-cheese-and-Pop-Rocks facial.” -Sloane Crosley

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