The Dinner List Quotes

“People in relationships are either flowers or gardeners. Two flowers shouldn't partner; they need someone to support them, to help them grow. ..... There are flowers and gardeners. Flowers bloom; gardeners tend. Two flowers, no tending everything dies.”
― Rebecca Serle, The Dinner List

“So you can't just blame the person who leaves. If two people are unhappy, clocking the person who actually walks out the door is just getting them on a technicality.”
― Rebecca Serle, The Dinner List

“I had to dim my light. It was not an easy thing to be married to a celebrity. But it's also not an easy thing to be married to darkness. Eventually I dimmed so far I extinguished”
― Rebecca Serle, The Dinner List

“Sometimes I think that the only true way we can ever know a thing's value is by losing it.”
― Rebecca Serle, The Dinner List

“Consistent contentment rarely makes for good storytelling.”
― Rebecca Serle, The Dinner List

“When you suffer alone it’s terrible,” she says. “But when you watch other people suffer, innocent people, those that cannot help themselves—it is worse.”
― Rebecca Serle, The Dinner List

“What I am telling you is that it's not your place. You do not get to reignite someone else's life.”
― Rebecca Serle, The Dinner List

“Worrying is wishing for what you don't want.”
― Rebecca Serle, The Dinner List

“You cannot have good without evil,” Audrey says. “They are like DNA strands. Intricately and irrevocably spun together. Sometimes good wins, sometimes evil does. We do not fight for good’s permanent triumph, but for the balance. And so it goes.”
― Rebecca Serle, The Dinner List

“There is no simple beauty in perfection.”
― Rebecca Serle, The Dinner List

“The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said.”
― Rebecca Serle, The Dinner List

“That's the thing about life — these moments that define us emerge out of nothing. A missed call. A trip down the stairs. A car accident. They happen in a moment, a breath.”
― Rebecca Serle, The Dinner List

“In those two years in the beginning I was happy, and happiness has a way of quickening. Grief marks things. Joy lets them through. Days and months can pass in the blink of an eye. I was happier than I ever remember being in my life. Things changed. Jessica and I moved out. Tobias and I moved in. She got engaged. Then married. And then, he left. We were two years in, six since Santa Monica. What I didn't know then was that we were only halfway there.”
― Rebecca Serle, The Dinner List

“The mere act of taking a chance, of changing, is by definition an act of evolution. And when we evolve, we grow. And that’s the point.”
― Rebecca Serle, The Dinner List

“Life is growth. If we stop growing, we are as good as dead.”
― Rebecca Serle, The Dinner List

“I thought it meant he saw truth in things that were frivolous, and frivolity in things that were fundamental.”
― Rebecca Serle, The Dinner List

“Habits make of tomorrow, yesterday.”
― Rebecca Serle, The Dinner List

“When I look back at my relationship with [ Insert name here ] it's at our highlights reel; our greatest hits. The stuff that crept in, the stuff that drove us apart I too easily forget!”
― Rebecca Serle, The Dinner List

“We are taught that honesty is the most important quality. Tell the truth. Do not lie. Etc. But there are so many instances when honesty isn’t kind. When the kinder thing to do is to keep what you have to say to yourself.”
― Rebecca Serle, The Dinner List

“Here is what I remember him saying: Kindness before honesty. We are taught that honesty is the most important quality. Tell the truth. Do not lie. Etc. But there are so many instances when honesty isn't kind. When the kinder thing to do is to keep what you have to say to yourself. Tobias didn't understand that. He told me everything. Eventually, so did I. But as the honesty grew, so did the cruelty. Sometimes I thought we were being honest just to see how deep we could cut.”
― Rebecca Serle, The Dinner List

“This was the thing he wanted most in the world, and I couldn't be there to share in it with him. A thought crossed my mind: that we could have the things we wanted, just not together.”
― Rebecca Serle, The Dinner List

“When someone leaves, remembering the joy is far more painful than thinking about the misery.”
― Rebecca Serle, The Dinner List

“Like their love story was so epic the day-to-day didn’t matter. But that’s what relationships are. They’re the day-to-day.”
― Rebecca Serle, The Dinner List

“Change is the only true constant.”
― Rebecca Serle, The Dinner List

“So you can’t just blame the person who leaves. If two people are unhappy, clocking the person who actually walks out the door is just getting them on a technicality.”
― Rebecca Serle, The Dinner List

“Worrying is wishing for what you don’t want. Man plans and God laughs.”
― Rebecca Serle, The Dinner List

“She breaks off, and I am reminded, of course, of her mother. Of the cancer that came to claim her. Of the absence of her. At Jessica’s graduation. Wedding. The birth of her child. What wouldn’t she do to have one dinner with her? To get one night to tell her everything that happened and all the ways it was unfair? To sit in her presence and touch and gaze and mourn?”
― Rebecca Serle, The Dinner List

“You’re an inquisitive person,” I had written to her. “You question everything. But you never questioned Sumir.”
― Rebecca Serle, The Dinner List

“happiness has a way of quickening. Grief marks things. Joy lets them through.”
― Rebecca Serle, The Dinner List

“It’s strange the tricks adrenaline plays on you. The need to fix, to rectify. In the moment of impact we think it’s possible to go back. We’re so close to the previous minute; how hard would it be to just turn back the clock? To just quickly undo what has just been done?”
― Rebecca Serle, The Dinner List