Great Big Beautiful Life Quotes

“Love isn’t something you can cup in your hands, and I have to believe that means it’s something that can’t ever be lost.”
― Emily Henry, Great Big Beautiful Life

“It’s yours,” he offers. I laugh. “Oh? I can have the world?” “Mine,” he says, “yeah. You can have mine.”
― Emily Henry, Great Big Beautiful Life

“There’s an old saying about stories, and how there are always three versions of them: yours, mine, and the truth.”
― Emily Henry, Great Big Beautiful Life

“For the one you love? Anything. You unmake the world and build a new one. You do anything to give them what they need.”
― Emily Henry, Great Big Beautiful Life

“I find myself thinking that maybe every bit of heartbreak in life can be rearranged and used for something beautiful, that it doesn't really matter whether I chose this path or I was born onto it, so long as I stop and appreciate the path itself.”
― Emily Henry, Great Big Beautiful Life

“I think you live in a world that’s more interesting than the one most people live in,” he says, and just as my heart starts to sink with disappointment, with a kind of loneliness, he adds, “and I wish I could live in it too.” I feel myself beaming. “I’ll take you sometime.” “I’d like that,” he says.”
― Emily Henry, Great Big Beautiful Life

“When I let myself dream,” he murmurs against my ear, “or it all comes crashing down—it’s Alice, Alice on my mind. Alice all the time.”
― Emily Henry, Great Big Beautiful Life

“I feel like you’re mine. Like you’re mine in a way no one else ever has been.”
― Emily Henry, Great Big Beautiful Life

“Just because something doesn’t make money or win awards doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value.”
― Emily Henry, Great Big Beautiful Life

“It’s important that I play this cool. Fact: I have never played it cool in my life.”
― Emily Henry, Great Big Beautiful Life

“I welcome her to this great big beautiful life.”
― Emily Henry, Great Big Beautiful Life

“The world Freddy Ives lived in was built around him. There wasn't room for her.'
I swallow a knot. 'What do you think he should have done?'
She turns the full force of those shining blue eyes on me. 'For the one you love? Anything. You unmake the world and build a new one. You do anything to give them what they need.”
― Emily Henry, Great Big Beautiful Life

“There are all kinds of reasons for a woman to want to disappear. Always have been.”
― Emily Henry, Great Big Beautiful Life

“Then again, maybe love was always a gift. The only thing that couldn’t be bought or sold or bartered for.”
― Emily Henry, Great Big Beautiful Life

“I should’ve asked him more. I should’ve written it all down. I should’ve recorded every stupid joke and every piece of advice. I should have taken videos of him singing while you cooked in the kitchen.”
― Emily Henry, Great Big Beautiful Life

“Do you want to have kids?” I ask. “Sometimes,” he says. “When I’m feeling optimistic.” I bump sideways into him, the skin of our arms sticking slightly from the heat. “Does that happen often?” He looks down his shoulder at me with a slight smirk. “Not often, no.” “So the rest of the time,” I say, “when you’re not feeling optimistic, what do you think?” “The rest of the time …” Another long exhale, his eyes straight ahead as we go back to ambling down the block. “The rest of the time, I think, what if the polar ice caps keep melting? What if medical care keeps getting more expensive, and social security runs out, and housing prices keep rising while minimum wage doesn’t, and what if they resent me for bringing them into all of this? “What if they just hate me? Not because of the state of the world, but just because they hate me. Or what if they’re sick? What if they join a cult, and I can’t convince them to come home? What if they start a cult? What if they get into some heinous shit, and I can’t love them anymore—or worse, I keep loving them even though I can’t change anything? “What if there’s another world war? Or what if … what if everything else goes right, but at the end of my life, they’re sitting in hospice with me …” His voice thickens uncharacteristically, wavering just the slightest bit. “And there are things they wish they could say to me, or hear from me, but I don’t remember who I am, let alone who they are. What if they have to care for me, for years, after I’ve stopped calling them by their nicknames or telling them I love them?”
― Emily Henry, Great Big Beautiful Life

“You know, my mother was ahead of her time. The kind of woman who wanted to have it all," she says. "She knew she deserved it too. But the problem is, once you love someone, you can't have it all anymore. Love comes with sacrifice.”
― Emily Henry, Great Big Beautiful Life

“Why didn’t I record him? I think again, with a deep pulse of pain. And just as fast, I feel a breeze ripple over my back, and it's hard not to believe or maybe just hope-that maybe I didn't need to record it.
That maybe he's here, his atoms redistributed, the ashes we sprinkled in the river near our house now mixed with the sand all around me, his love permanent and intractable as ever.
Love isn't something you can cup in your hands, and I have to believe that means it's something that can't ever be lost.”
― Emily Henry, Great Big Beautiful Life

“I think she loves me because I’m her daughter. But I’ve never felt sure she loves me because I’m me. Does that make sense?”
― Emily Henry, Great Big Beautiful Life

“I'm not trying to shut you up, Alice," he says. "It's just that somehow, almost everything you say makes me want to kiss you.”
― Emily Henry, Great Big Beautiful Life

“She chokes up again, but she forces herself onward. “Your dad understood you.” Her voice squeaks, and her shoulders lift in a slight shrug. “He understood the things you love. He understood your sense of humor. He had access to pieces of you I couldn’t get to, and I was okay with that, mostly. But when he died—god, Alice, I haven’t been able to figure out how to be what you need. He always knew the right thing to say to you. He always knew how to cheer you up, or how to talk you down. “And I want to be a good parent to you, but I can’t be him.” “I don’t need you to be him,” I promise tearily. “You deserve to have him,” she says. “You don’t know how many times I’ve wished it had been me instead.” “Mom.” My heart cracks, shatters. I wrap my arms around her again. “Don’t say that.”
― Emily Henry, Great Big Beautiful Life

“With writing, you could always add more. More, more, more until you got to the heart of a thing, and after that, you could chip away the excess.”
― Emily Henry, Great Big Beautiful Life

“The good and the bad, the magic and curses, all the blues and grays right alongside the reds and golds. I tell her the story about a love so powerful it remade the world for her. I welcome her to this great big beautiful life.”
― Emily Henry, Great Big Beautiful Life

“That’s the deal with people. They’re always more than one thing, and a lot of times they’re even a collection of contradictory traits.”
― Emily Henry, Great Big Beautiful Life

“Unfortunately, I’m still—at my core—me.”
― Emily Henry, Great Big Beautiful Life

“It's yours, he offers.
I laugh. Oh? I can have the world?
Mine, he says,
yeah. You can have mine.”
― Emily Henry, Great Big Beautiful Life

“It occurs to me then that in my effort to be positive, optimistic, and understanding, I might've made myself into an unreliable narrator of sorts, someone who can't easily be trusted not to sugarcoat things.”
― Emily Henry, Great Big Beautiful Life

“Not only does he pause, he actually turns toward me and makes eye contact. Huge progress for us. Friendship bracelets incoming, surely.”
― Emily Henry, Great Big Beautiful Life

“I murmur, “Tell me something no one knows about you,” and he’s quiet and still for so long I start to wonder if I’ve crossed a line. Then he tips his chin down to his clavicle to meet my eyes and says simply, “I’m in love with you.”
― Emily Henry, Great Big Beautiful Life

“You’re a human,” I say. “The machine can try to compress you into something two dimensional, digestible, but that’s not you. And we’re not here to service the machine.”
― Emily Henry, Great Big Beautiful Life