Hello Beautiful Quotes

“Sylvie had read somewhere that the more times a story was told, the less accurate it became. Humans were prone to exaggeration; they leaned away from the parts of the narrative they found boring and leaned into the exciting spots. Details and timelines changed over years of repetition. The story became more myth and less true. Sylvie thought about how she and William rarely told their story and felt pleased; by not being shared, their love story remained intact.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“Her father had called Julia his rocket ever since she was a little girl—I can’t wait to watch you fly, he’d say—and she was the one who fixed problems.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“He didn’t actually think of it as a book—that’s just what Julia called it. For William, it was something he worked on because there was a silence inside him that sometimes frightened him.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“But her sister had snaked the truth out of her and said it in front of everyone, and—even though Sylvie knew Julia had meant well—that felt painfully, strangely, like a loss. The dream was now in the air, at risk of the elements, beyond her grasp.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“My mom said she forgave her because she wanted to keep loving her.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“Sylvie wondered, looking at the mural, if bravery was wedded to loss: You did the unthinkable thing and paid a price.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“They’re telling me about all the bad things that have happened to their bodies,” William said to Arash. “Not just what happened on the court.” Arash nodded. “I’m glad.” “You’re glad?” “They need to let that out to someone. We hardly ever ask each other how we’ve been hurt.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“She knew it was a strange contradiction, but despite her interest in love, weddings made her uncomfortable. They were too showy, too public. Deep love between two people was a private, wordless endeavor, and to place the lovers in fancy clothes in front of a crowd seemed antithetical to the nature of the thing. No one could see love—this was what Sylvie believed, anyway. It was an internal state. Watching that moment between two lovers felt wrong to her, almost blasphemous.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“Rose was axing a branch off her own family tree, which meant she was both inflicting and experiencing pain.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“Discomfort is just a feeling, William. It’s okay to let yourself feel your feelings.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“It did look lovely, with the morning sun streaming in. The three visitors understood the preciousness of having your own space. When you grew up in a crowded, small house like they had, much of the dream of adulthood became living somewhere less crowded. Somewhere that was your own and didn’t need to be shared.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“Many guests wept, on and off, as if their tears were for Charlie but also for their own personal heartbreaks. An early lost love, a miscarriage, the pounding headache of never having enough money. In a setting where weeping was acceptable, they would take their opportunity.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“Their mother was their safe space, and so, with her, they felt every iota of their feelings.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“but the young Alice had grown so tall that no one ever thought to help her, and she prided herself on never asking for help. Everyone—men and women—rushed to Carrie’s aid, even when she was perfectly fine, because she was cute and five feet tall. But the assumption was that Alice never needed help. She could, after all, reach every high shelf and carry her own luggage with no problem.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“Studying history was about scope, about understanding the terrain that surrounded the critical event.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“She'd always lived with family, and she hadn't realized how big a role waking up in the morning to the sounds of her parents...played in her feeling like herself. Her family was a mirror in which she recognized her reflection. When she woke up on a co-worker's couch, not sure where she was for a few moments, she didn't know who she was either.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“When an old person dies,” Kent said, “even if that person is wonderful, he or she is still somewhat ready, and so are the people who loved them. They’re like old trees, whose roots have loosened in the ground. They fall gently. But when someone like your aunt Sylvie dies—before her time—her roots get pulled out and the ground is ripped up. Everyone nearby is in danger of being knocked over.” Alice”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“We are not separated from the world by our own edges… We’re part of the sky, and the rocks in your mother’s garden, and that old man who sleeps by the train station. We’re all interconnected, and when you see that, you see how beautiful life is. Your mother and sisters don’t have that awareness. Not yet, anyway. They believe they’re contained in their bodies, in the biographical facts of their lives.’

Sylvie felt like her father had shown her a part of herself she didn’t know existed… And the father and daughter had walked home, their arms touching, molecules dancing between them, and stars turning on like tiny lightbulbs in the evening sky.
… Syvlie would wait - forever, if necessary - for a man who saw the expanse of her.
The way her father had.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“He was his acts of kindness, and his love for his daughters, and the twenty minutes he’d spent with Sylvie behind the grocer’s that evening. That conversation had helped Sylvie understand herself in a new way. She looked for third doors because she was like her father. Julia sought to collect labels like honors student, girlfriend, and wife, but Sylvie steered away from labels. She wanted to be true to herself with every word she uttered, every action she took, and every belief she held. There was no label for kissing boys for ninety seconds in the library, which was part of why it made Sylvie happy and Julia uncomfortable. Sylvie would keep boycotting boring classes to read”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“Grief is love.” Now Alice thought: Forgiveness is too. The”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“she felt tangled in a net of grief. Her father was dead, and her mother had turned her away. My soulmate would save me, she thought. He would see me, and I would feel more solid. But this brought a fresh sadness, because if she ever did meet this man, he would never have known her father. Sylvie studied the ceiling for most of the night. She felt tears deep inside her, but they couldn’t seem to find a way out. She still hadn’t cried.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“When your love for a person is so profound that it's part of who you are, then the absence of the person becomes part of your DNA, your bones, and your skin.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“I didn't think I would ever find a man, other than my father, who truly understood me. Who would see the way I look at the world, what reading means to me, how I wonder about everything. Someone who would see the best version of me, and make me believe I could be that person." Sylvie blinked several times, as if trying to hold back tears. Her hands were fists at her sides. "I thought that type of love was a fairy tale. I thought that kind of man didn't exist. Which meant I got to feel good about the fact that I had a dream and yet could be safe with my sisters.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“You and your sisters have so many reference points, such a dense history,”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“Later that night, Sylvie sat in bed with a book open in her lap. She was too sleepy to read, but the proximity of the book was comforting. Telling”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“William thought of that sacrament now and felt bad for all the children who were forced to divide their ordinary lives into sins and not-sins so they would have something to say to a cassocked stranger.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“You’re depressed, not crazy. It’s not insane to be depressed in this world. It’s more sane than being happy.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“Sylvie had talked about one-two punches, about how Charlie had died on the day Izzy was born, and Sylvie had clearly used her magic to somehow bring William his daughter on the day his heart broke. His wife was trying to save him, yet again.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“He wanted to know where the ice was weakest beneath their feet so he could keep them from falling through.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“William crossed the room to stand in front of her. He held his hand out, palm facing up. His skin was soft and warm, so different from that day. A wave of feelings ran through Sylvia. A radio dial, spun inside her, the volume loud. I love you, she thought, and the words—impossible now to deny—brought her both desolation and deep joy. William was her one. He was her heart. He had changed all the molecules inside her. Sylvie had known love would come for her with the force of a tsunami. She dreamed of this ever since she was a little girl, and her dream had actually come true. But she had known her love would be impossible, a dead-end, unspeakable, because he had been married to her sister.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful