It Ends with Us (It Ends with Us, #1)

by Colleen Hoover

I love it when the sky makes me feel insignificant.

“Just make sure it’s brave and bold, Lily.”

sometimes people need a reminder that they just need to keep swimming.

Cookie dough and Atlas’s mouth mixed together is like heaven,

Dear Ellen, Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. He’s moving to Boston.

I’m scared if I don’t get out how I feel on paper, I’ll go crazy holding it all in.

Time can definitely heal all wounds.

“You’re really beautiful when you’re happy.”

“You’ll never get out of Boston purgatory if you keep souvenirs of Boston on your fridge like a tourist.”

Yeah. Best. Day. Ever.

“Lily, I think I like you too much,”

You made me question everything I thought I knew about you.

“Just… please don’t ever make me doubt you again. Please.”

He’s not like my father.

All humans make mistakes. What determines a person’s character aren’t the mistakes we make. It’s how we take those mistakes and turn them into lessons rather than excuses.

Lily, Atlas says just keep swimming.

I think about how sometimes, no matter how convinced you are that your life will turn out a certain way, all that certainty can be washed away with a simple change in tide.

“You were standing there like an angel, backlit by the light of heaven,” he said.

“You saved my life, Lily,” he said to me. “And you weren’t even trying.”

“If you don’t come back for me, I’ll come for you. And it won’t be pretty, Atlas Corrigan.”

Maybe love isn’t something that comes full circle. It just ebbs and flows, in and out, just like the people in our lives.

I am destroyed. Five minutes. That’s all it takes to completely destroy a person.

I’m supposed to be the one who protects you from the monsters. I’m not supposed to be one.”

doesn’t have to be forgiven in order to learn from it.

I speak to him with nothing but naked truth.

When you’re upset, just walk away. And I’ll walk away. We’ll leave the situation until you’re

calm enough to talk about it, okay?

But I can’t help you unless I know you need it. Ask me for help. We’ll get through this, I know we can.”

but marriage is about compromise. It’s about doing what’s best for the couple as a whole, not individually.

him. I hate him in this moment more than I’ve ever hated my father.

I hate myself just as much as I hate him.

“Are you hurt anywhere else?” I shake my head, because she can’t fix all the parts of me Ryle broke on the inside.

Just keep swimming.

Where are all the people who wonder why the men are even abusive? Isn’t that where the only blame should be placed?

Atlas kept swimming, and look at him now.

sometimes the things that matter to you most are also the things that hurt you the most.

And in order to get over that hurt, you have to sever all the extensions that keep you tethered to that pain.

I think that’s one of the biggest signs a person has matured—knowing how to appreciate things that matter to others, even if they don’t matter very much to you.

there’s this thing we do where one of us says “naked truth,” and then we’re forced to be brutally honest and say what we’re really thinking.

get ready for a whole lot of word vomit.

the difference between this feeling and death is the presence of another emotion that doesn’t necessarily follow in the event of an actual death. Hatred.

there are waves of reasoning that flow through me. I start to think things like “But I shouldn’t have had the magnet. I should have told him about the tattoo from the beginning. I shouldn’t have kept the journals.”

I have never felt this alone. This broken. This angry. This hurt.

I read somewhere once that 85 percent of women return to abusive situations.

Preventing your heart from forgiving someone you love is actually a hell of a lot harder than simply forgiving them.

I’m a statistic now.

Fuck. That. Shit. —Lily

feel robbed of the joy a mother should have when she finds out she’s pregnant. I feel like Ryle took that from me last night and it’s just one more thing I have to hate him for. Hatred is exhausting.

Damn these emotions.

His thumb brushes the outside of my shoulder, and I know it’s his unspoken way of saying he’s here for me.