The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

“I know that, Celia. And you know that. But no one else knows that.” “But maybe they would. If they tried.” “They aren’t going to try. Do you get that? No one wants to understand people like us.” “But they should.” “There are lots of things we all should do, sweetheart. But it doesn’t work that way.”

“I loved you so much that I thought you were the meaning of my life,” Celia said, crying. “I thought that people were put on earth to find other people, and I was put here to find you. To find you and touch your skin and smell your breath and hear all your thoughts. But I don’t think that’s true anymore.”

“It’s OK, you can fall down now. I’ll catch you.” So I fell down.

“If there are all different types of soul mates,” I told Harry one afternoon, when the two of us were sitting out on the patio with Connor, “then you are one of mine.”

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.

“Relationships are complex,” Evelyn says. “People are messy, and love can be ugly. I’m inclined to always err on the side of compassion.”

got back on the plane to New York, hiding my pain. And it wasn’t until I was back in my apartment that I lost it. Sobbing as if she’d died. That’s how final it felt. I had pushed her too far. And it was over.

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.

TOOK ME about four months to realize that Max had no intention of even trying to love me, that he was only capable of loving the idea of me. And then, after that, it seems so silly to say it, but I didn’t want to leave him, because I didn’t want to get divorced.