The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

“So do yourself a favor and learn how to grab life by the balls, dear. Don’t be so tied up trying to do the right thing when the smart thing is so painfully clear.”

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.

I wanted to give her a lot of things. I wanted what I had to be hers. I wondered if this was what it felt like to love someone. I already knew what it meant to be in love with someone. I’d felt it, and I’d acted it. But to love someone. To care for them. To throw your lot in with theirs and think, Whatever happens, it’s you and me.

I’m bisexual. Don’t ignore half of me so you can fit me into a box, Monique. Don’t do that.”

“It’s not wrong, sweetheart. It’s not,” I said. “They’re wrong.”

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

“Yeah,” she said. “But if the last few years with you have been any indication, I think it also feels like taking your bra off at the end of the day.”

Passion never mattered very much to me. But that type of intimacy that we had? That was what I cherished.”