Marta Oliynyk’s Reviews > The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo > Status Update

I've been given so much in this life. But I've had to fight tooth and nail for it. If I can one day leave this world a little bit safer and a little bit easier for those who come after me... well, that just might make it all worth it.

When you dig just the tiniest bit beneath the surface, everyone's love life is original and interesting and nuanced and defies any easy definition.

Nobody deserves anything. It's simply a matter of who's willing to go and take it for themselves. And you are a person who has proven to be willing to go out there and take what you want. So be honest about that. 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.

"All a marriage is is a promise."

- I think being yourself - your true, entire self—is always going to feel like you're swimming upstream.
- I think it also feels like taking your bra off at the end of the day.

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.

Hitting my marks felt like running a marathon I'd already run a thousand times before. So easy, so unchallenging, so uninspiring, that you resent even being asked to lace up your shoes.

Sometimes divorce isn't an earth-shattering loss. Sometimes it's just two people waking up out of a fog.

You said you didn't want to give up. And look, I don't want to give up, either. I don't want to fail at this. But that's not actually a great reason to stay together. We should have reasons why we don't want to give up. It shouldn't just be that we don't want to give up. And I don't ... I don't have any.

- Celia wasn't perfect. She could be cruel.
- She always made sure the bad was outweighed by so much good. I... well, I didn't do that for her. I made it fifty-fifty. 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.