The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

When you’re given an opportunity to change your life, be ready to do whatever it takes to make it happen. The world doesn’t give things, you take things. If you learn one thing from me, it should probably be that.”

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.

When you’re an American movie star with huge boobs in a French movie, you quickly learn that when French men are saying seins nus, they are talking about you being topless.

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.” So I fell down. And Harry caught me.

In all my years after Don, all my movies, all my marriages, I had never once wanted to go back in time in the hopes that Don and I could get it right. My life since Don had been a story of my own making, a mess and a joy of my own decisions, and a string of experiences that landed me with everything I ever wanted.

Guilt is a feeling I’ve never made much peace with. I find that when it rears its head, it brings an army. When I feel guilty for one thing, I start to see all the other things I should feel guilty for.

I guess what I’m saying is it’s not all luck. It’s luck and being a son of a bitch. Harry taught me that.