“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
Parenting
“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 the house?”
— Sloane Crosley
Morning
“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 applicable to them.”
— Sloane Crosley
Pet
“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
Family
“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
Freedom
“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
Marriage
“I like to try to do a little work before I do anything in the morning, even if it's a paragraph.”
— Sloane Crosley
Morning
“I hope to one day co-sign a lease with another person but, well, it doesn't plague me that I have yet to do so. Put it this way: I've never had to violently tug at my own pillow at 2 A.M. to get myself to stop snoring.”
— Sloane Crosley
Hope
“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
Health
“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
Travel
“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 to search for the better-loved pair I have left on top of my dresser.”
— Sloane Crosley
Home
“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
War
“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.”
— Sloane Crosley
Birthday
“The truth is, I wrote a novel when I was 23. It's hideously bad. Truly rotten.”
— Sloane Crosley
Truth
“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
History
“I think a lot of humor is about distracting yourself. Pretend you're not trying to make it funny. Because for some reason the effort to be funny smells like sulphur in our culture.”
— Sloane Crosley
Funny
“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
Beauty
“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
Car
“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
Women
“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 gears. And then? Then you go insane.”
— Sloane Crosley
Experience