The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Here’s the thing about Hollywood. It’s both a place and a feeling. If you run there, you can run toward Southern California,

life doesn’t get easier simply because it gets more glamorous.

Be wary of men with something to prove.

Ruby and I both were aware of what kind of power that is, accessibility.

You have to find a job that makes your heart feel big instead of one that makes it feel small.

People think that intimacy is about sex.

But intimacy is about truth. When you realize you can tell someone your truth, when you can show yourself to them, when you stand in front of them bare and their response is “You’re safe with me”—that’s intimacy.

Sometimes reality comes crashing down on you. Other times reality simply waits, patiently, for you to run out of the energy it takes to deny it.

The daily peace of loving plainly.

You do not know how fast you have been running, how hard you have been working, how truly exhausted you are, until someone stands behind you and says, “It’s OK, you can fall down now. I’ll catch you.”

It’s always been fascinating to me how things can be simultaneously true and false, how people can be good and bad all in one, how

you in a way that is beautifully selfless while serving themselves ruthlessly.