The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

It takes everything I have not to take it back, not to apologize profusely. My mother raised me to be polite, to be demure. I have long operated under the idea that civility is subservience. But it hasn’t gotten me very far, that type of kindness. The world respects people who think they should be running it.

Evelyn always leaves you hoping you’ll get just a little bit more. And she always denies you.

“Do you understand what I’m telling you? 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.”

It would take me years to figure out that life doesn’t get easier simply because it gets more glamorous.

I’d told him I was someone else. And then I started getting angry that he couldn’t see who I really was.

If the definition of enjoying sex means that it is pleasurable, then I’ve had a lot of sex that I didn’t enjoy. But if we’re defining it as being happy to have made the trade, then, well, I haven’t had much I hated.

But the truth is, praise is just like an addiction. The more you get it, the more of it you need just to stay even.

Would I have clung to his every word so tightly if his advice had felt unlimited?

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.

I’m not suggesting that charming girls should take pity on the pretty ones. I’m just saying it’s not so great being loved for something you didn’t do.

But I wasn’t heartbroken when Don left me. I simply felt like my marriage had failed. And those are very different things.”

And here’s why it worked: no matter your gender or sexual orientation, we all just want to be teased.

You wonder what it must be like to be a man, to be so confident that the final say is yours.

And you stop. And you think, If only they gave out Oscars for this shit.

You should know this about the rich: they always want to get richer. It is never boring, getting your hands on more money.

Movie stars are movie stars are movie stars. Sure, we all fade after a while. We are human, full of flaws like anyone else. But we are the chosen ones because we are extraordinary. And there is nothing an extraordinary person likes more than someone else extraordinary.

you can’t tell a single thing about a person’s true character if you both want the same thing.

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

Or maybe Robert merely stumbled into something that worked for him, unsure what he wanted until he had it. Some people are lucky like that. Me, I’ve always gone after what I wanted with everything in me. Others fall into happiness. Sometimes I wish I was like them. I’m sure sometimes they wish they were like me.

“I think being yourself—your true, entire self—is always going to feel like you’re swimming upstream.”

No one is just a victim or a victor. Everyone is somewhere in between. People who go around casting themselves as one or the other are not only kidding themselves, but they’re also painfully unoriginal.”