Emily Giffin

“I think I have always had the misguided sense that worry and fear serve as an insurance policy of sorts. On a subconscious level, I subscribe to the notion that if you worry about something, it is somehow less likely to happen. Well, I am here to say that it doesn't work like that. The very thing you fear the most can still happen anyway. And when it does, you feel that much more cheated for having feared it in the first place.”

“On a subconscious level, I subscribe to the notion that if you worry about something, it is somehow less likely to happen. Well, I am here to say that it doesn't work like that. The very thing you fear the most can still happen anyway. And when it does, you feel that much more cheated for having feared it in the first place.”

“I realize thirty is just a number, that you're only as old as you feel and all that. I also realize that in the grand scheme of things, thirty is still young. But it's not that young.”

“You can never be too sure when it comes to things that matter most”

“It's not that simple or clear-cut - and I wonder if it ever is when it comes to matters of the heart.”

“They were all true—and still are—but were better left unsaid, just as I decided never to confess to Andy how close Icame to losing everything. Instead, I hold that day deep within myself, as a reminder that love is the sum of ourchoices, the strength of our commitments, the ties that bind us together.”

“Guys aren't so different from us, I think, which no matter how many times I think it will always seem like a remarkable revelation.”

“She wonders what fool ever said that it's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all - she has never disagreed with something so much.”

“Everyone has a messed-up family to one extent or another but we all have an obligation to rise above it. Live in the present and stop sniveling about the past.”

“I just think that I screwed up what could have turned into a more significant relationship, or at least a lasting friendship.”

“Anything worthwhile is tough.”

“Because Marian was the love of my life. For a long time. And that's the kind of information you share when you're young and stupid and hoping that you're in something that is going to be even bigger and better than what you once lost. It's the kind of shit you waste your time thinking about. Lemme tell you -- it does no good.”

“They both continue to stare at each other, expressionless, motionless, in the weirdest standoff I've ever seen almost as if they're calling the other's bluff. It is the way you'd look at a perfect stranger, although if they were actually strangers someone would break down and exchange a pleasantry after such prolonged eye contact. I start to wonder if maybe I shouldn't reintroduce my own parents.”

“So I guess what I am trying to say is life is fast. And it keeps speeding up. Sometimes I lose track of the season -- or even the year. And we just have to make the best of it all. Our choices. Our fleeting moments together.”

“He who fails to plan, plans to fail.”

“The purpose of life is a life of purpose.”

“Nothing about my life is lucky - it's all about hard work, it is all an uphill struggle.”

“I had never understood what people meant when they said they'd rather be alone if they couldn't be in the right relationship. Now I got it.”

“... o oposto do amor não é o ódio, é a indiferença. (p. 306)" (GIFFIN, 2004.)”

“If she liked him so darn much, she should have done something about it. Taken some real action.”

“I'm glad you were both here," I finally manage, thinking how strange it is to be standing with the two people who made you, something most kids take for granted every day of their lives.”

“Even if we no longer have much in common, we would have always had the past, which, in some ways, is just as important as the present or future. It is where we come from, what makes us who we are.”

“I certainly never felt rejected because they had given me up. My parents knew nothing about my birth mother, yet always explained with certainty that she didn't "give me up" or "give me away" - she made a plan for me, the best one she could make under her circumstances, whatever those were.”

“My name is Kirby Rose, and I'm adopted. I don't mean to make it sound like an AA confession, although sometimes that's how people take it, like it's something they should be supportive about. I just mean that they are two basic facts about me.”

“Throw in the intensity of emotions that come with that bittersweet summer sandwiched between high school graduation and the rest of your life...”

“It was a mistake. You didn't try to hurt anyone.”

“Things are what they are and there's no point dwelling in the past or wondering what could have been.”

“Whats not to love is hardly a reason to love. And the catch of your life is not the same thing as the love of your life. Be careful of that subtle but rather crucial distinction.”

“So there the two of us were. Frozen in time, living in the moment, focused only on our immediate desires. Which of course included sex. Lots and lots of it.”

“But now I can see that there is redemption and beauty in an accident emanating from love.”

“It was about grace, she decides, something that has been missing from her own life. ... She wants to be the kind of person who can bestow unearned kindness on another, replace bitterness with empathy, forgive only for the sake of forgiving.”

“I looked at my friend, overwhelmed with confusion. Unsure of what April should do. What I should do. What a strong woman would do. In fact, the only thing that I am certain of is that there are no easy answers, and that anyone who says there are has never been in our shoes.”

“It's simply human nature to have an occasional, fleeting interest in someone whom you once loved.”

“There are two kinds of sorry. There is the sorry imbued with regret. And a pure sorry. The kind that is merely asking for forgiveness, nothing more.”

“You'll be dancing once again and the pain will end, You'll have no time for grievin'.”

“You can run but you can't hide”

“... I think my sister Daphne's obsession with having children has a lot to do with wanting to erase the pain my mother caused. On one level, Daphne's approach makes more sense. Yet the thought of a redo is not only unappealing, but terrifying. I don't want that kind of power over anyone. I don't want to be something that someone has to overcome. After all, I think everyone would agree that it's far worse to be a fucked-up mother than it is to have one.”

“Their collective advice: don't settle. Keep looking. Find Mr. Right. That is what they all did. And by God, I think they believe it. Because nobody who marries at the ripe age of twenty-three can be settling. Naturally. That is a phenomenon that only happens to women in their thirties.”

“Only boring people get bored.”

“I'll remind you of that someday , Maura says. "when you're married to a man who once looked into your eyes and promised to forsake all others. I'll remind of that after you've just had his baby and you have postpartum depression and feel as fat as cow and you are pumping milk into a plastic containers in the middle of the night while he's running around with some twenty-two-years old named Lissette. I'll remind you of that. Maura to Jess.”

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”

“Being married cuts on your freedom. Having a husband or a relationship at all puts constraints on you. by Michael.”

“Where we belong is often where we least expect to find ourselves—a place that we may have willed ourselves to forget, but that the heart remembers forever.”

“Really-nothing is unforgivable if you truly love someone.”

“We have no relationship without honesty. - by Claude”

“But certainly not everyday you can find someone who wants to have a monogamous relationship”

“I wondered why I was so startled by the encounter when there was something that seemed utterly inevitable about the moment. Not in any grand, destined sense; just in the quiet, stubborn way that unfinished business has of imposing its will on the unwilling.”

“Things certainly aren't the way you imagine them when you're a kid and dreaming big dreams about what your life as a grown-up will look like.”

“And like a favorite old movie, sometimes the sameness in a friend is what you like the most about her.”

“What's not to love' is hardly a reason to love, And the catch of your life is not the same thing as the love of your life. Be careful of that subtle but rather crucial distinction.”