The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

After she died, I would cry only in the shower, where no one could see me or hear me, where I couldn’t tell what were my tears and what was the water.

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.

She was simplicity perfected.

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

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.

The only currency I had was my sexuality, and I used it like money.

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.

Which is about the cruelest thing you can do to someone you love, give them just enough good to make them stick through a hell of a lot of bad.

But once he has his hand on the doorknob, I realize that I have put into motion the end of a lackluster life in the interest of eventually finding a great one.

“You loved having a movie star on your arm. You loved getting to be the one who slept in my bed. That’s not love. That’s possession.”

I knew what it was like to realize that the one you love would leave this earth well before you. But nothing could prepare me for the pain of watching my child suffer.

You don’t have to make yourself OK for a good mother; a good mother makes herself OK for you.