The First Husband Quotes

“I'm not sure we get to choose when or where we find what we're looking for.”
― Laura Dave, The First Husband

“We loved each other in the same difficult, unusable way where you took turns doing it, instead of ever managing to do it at the same time.”
― Laura Dave, The First Husband

“that real love comes over time, once that initial draw you're talking about takes on a different form. When you get to understand there is something more concrete between you. Something that is worth preserving...”
― Laura Dave, The First Husband

“...maybe just once in this life someone loves us for the us we don't even know how to be yet. And if we lose him too early--in the name of all the promises in the world: a new job, a new city, an old love offering us happily ever after--we may just lose that chance to be our best self.”
― Laura Dave, The First Husband

“When everything gets messy and brutal and complicated, the truth is the first thing to go, isn't it?”
― Laura Dave, The First Husband

“The calm can't last, not if you're really living. if you're living fully, the storms coming to get you.”
― Laura Dave, The First Husband

“But men can forget. If too much time goes by, they can forget what they have. How much they want what they have.”
― Laura Dave, The First Husband

“That's the brutality of a breakup, isn't it? The people leaving think they did everything possible, the people left behind think what is possible hasn't even been tested yet.”
― Laura Dave, The First Husband

“When you're willing to do the work, it's amazing what can be saved.”
― Laura Dave, The First Husband

“Sometimes you don't know it. What you have been waiting your whole life for. You don't know until it is happening.”
― Laura Dave, The First Husband

“A small, inexplicable part of me was scared, right from the start - of counting on someone, of trusting that he'd always be there for me - as much it was exactly what another part of me wanted.”
― Laura Dave, The First Husband

“why people travel far from home-far from where they started. There was, of course, the obvious reason:escape. Escape from the monotony of every day. SO many of us chasing what we wished our everyday existence could be instead. But there was a less obvious and perhaps more important reason. Somewhere, often right in the middle of a trip, you got to believe this was your everyday life. You got to believe you were never going home again.”
― Laura Dave, The First Husband

“Even now, after Nick had caused me pain, the truth was I didn't want to cause him any. Wasn't that love, after all?”
― Laura Dave, The First Husband

“It seemed to me that the universe was tricky that way-as soon as you didn't need something as badly, as soon as you hold onto the hope of it less tightly, you get a second shot at it.”
― Laura Dave, The First Husband

“It seemed to me that the universe was tricky that way--as soon as you didn't need something as badly, as soon as you hold onto the hope of it less tightly, you get a second shot at it.”
― Laura Dave, The First Husband

“...knew each other in that honest, unmitigated way that people get to know you who meet you when you're still young. Before all the rest of it. Before it becomes both easier and harder to know yourself.”
― Laura Dave, The First Husband

“You have something you want to do. Something you like to do. Something you're good at. Why don't we start with that? Why don't you let that be the entire plan for now?”
― Laura Dave, The First Husband

“quoting Steinbeck-Peter said,"'A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.”
― Laura Dave, The First Husband

“Sometimes you don't know it. What you have been waiting your whole life for. You don't know it until it is happening.”
― Laura Dave, The First Husband

“I’m not sure we get to, Annie,” he said. “I’m not sure we get to choose when or where we find what we’re looking for.”
― Laura Dave, The First Husband

“We knew each other so well by this point—knew each other in that honest, unmitigated way that people get to know you who meet you when you’re still young. Before all the rest of it. Before it becomes both easier and harder to know yourself.”
― Laura Dave, The First Husband

“We only really remember things for five years. After that, what we remember, what's actually etched in our brain is our memory of the thing, not the thing itself. And five years after that, what's left is our memory of the memory.”
― Laura Dave, The First Husband

“I was suddenly and completely inundated by it. What had been lost in losing him.”
― Laura Dave, The First Husband

“For the first two years of “Checking Out,” I had an epigraph that ran underneath my byline—a quote from Ernest Hemingway. A simple one-liner that read, “Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.”
― Laura Dave, The First Husband

“Because it puts it ultimately in our hands, doesn’t it? What we choose to live with, and what we choose to live without.”
― Laura Dave, The First Husband

“It’s amazing . . .” he said. “When you’re willing to do the work, it’s amazing what can be saved.”
― Laura Dave, The First Husband

“The calm continueth not long without a storm,” he said. “You lost me there.” “The origin of the expression, the calm before the storm,” he said. “From an unknown source in the sixteenth century. But it started a little different than how it’s evolved. I like it more. The original idea that the calm can’t last, not if you’re really living. If you’re living fully, the storm’s coming to get you.”
― Laura Dave, The First Husband

“The bigger point for me was that if you were on a trip with someone you didn’t love, at the end of it you’d only get to remember what you remembered. But if you went with someone you loved, you’d often get more than that. You’d get to share it with them. You’d get to remember what they remembered too.”
― Laura Dave, The First Husband

“a quote from Ernest Hemingway. A simple one-liner that read, “Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.”
― Laura Dave, The First Husband

“I know it sounds crazy. How can someone figure out how to stay by going again? ” I said, trying to explain it. “But going again is the only way I’ve ever found what I’m looking for.”
― Laura Dave, The First Husband