Hello Beautiful Quotes

“He was learning the difference between calm and disconnected and was working to make his days more the former than the latter.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“He’d never had this level of molecular awareness before, never felt so much in a single moment. William had always evaded the pointed spears that emotions threw at him and been quick to smother any uncomfortable sensations. He had a hard time believing that other people were able to stand being alive if it came at them with this intensity.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“He'd known his wife was dying, but he hadn't expected her to die.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“I’m not anywhere I’m supposed to be, she thought. And I have no idea where I am.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“Sylvie suddenly felt sad, and her voice sounded sad too—was there some basic human truth that if you were naked, you couldn’t control the tone of your voice? Like, her voice was naked too?”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“Sylvie had seen a photo of the aftermath of a massive earthquake once, and the image had stayed with her. A road split in half lengthwise, revealing the middle of the earth, and how silly humans were to build houses and schools and cars on top and pretend they were safe.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“Her family was a mirror in which she recognized her reflection”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“Do you have everything you need for the flight?” Julia said, and then thought, Why can I only say stupid things? She wanted to be in this moment with her mother and sister, but she wasn’t. She was a cheap bouncy ball in the middle of a gunfight.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“William said, “That kind of loss…must be hard.” “I didn’t expect”—she paused—“for it to be part of everything, every minute. I didn’t know that you could lose someone, and that meant you lost so much else.” William considered this. “Like it’s all connected.” She made a small noise next to him, neither a yes nor a no.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“Sylvie had been hurt by Charlie’s death; Julia had been shipwrecked too. Charlie Padavano had felt essential to his daughters, as if he was part of their own construction.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“Charlie had seen and loved each of them for who they were. When any of his girls—including Rose—had come into view, he’d always given them the same welcome, calling out, Hello beautiful! The greeting was nice enough to make them want to leave the room and come in all over again.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“Julia wondered if all four girls’ voices lived inside their mother. Emeline’s earnestness, Julia’s clear directives, Cecelia’s excitement about the palette of colors that made up the world, Sylvie’s romantic yearning. Perhaps Rose simply masked her daughters’ voices with her own gruff tone, her own twist of anger and disappointment, but they were all there, buried within her.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“The people who called her easy, or a slut, were lazy thinkers. She had never done more than make out with Ernie, or Miles, or the man in the suit with the thick eyebrows. These young men seemed happy to kiss her, and the ninety-second limit meant nothing serious could develop, which suited Sylvie perfectly. If a steady boyfriend or sluttiness were the two available doors, she had found and opened a third. What made her most excited about her future was the idea of finding more third doors.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“It was because she loved him that Rose had been so disappointed by her marriage and why it was essential that her girls grow up strong and educated, able to stand on their own two feet, unbowed by something as tricky and undependable as love.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“And the kind of love you’re looking for is made up, anyway. The idea of love in those books—Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Anna Karenina—is that it’s a force that obliterates you. They’re all tragedies, Sylvie. Think about it; those novels all end with despair, or death.” Sylvie had sighed. “The tragedy isn’t the point,” she said. “We read those books today because the romance is so enormous and true that we can’t look away. It’s not obliteration; it’s a kind of expanding, I think. If I’m lucky enough to know love like that…” She went quiet, unable to put into words how meaningful this would be. Julia shook her head at the sight of her sister’s red lips, because this dream was bound to backfire. Sylvie cared too much and lived too much in her head. She would be branded a slut and eventually marry a good-looking loser because he stared at Sylvie in a way that reminded her of Heathcliff.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“Julia had seen photos of Rose, pretty and tidy and smiling in this same garden, with Charlie at the beginning of their marriage, but her mother had eventually accepted and donned marital disappointment the same way she strapped on her ridiculous gardening outfit. All of her considerable efforts to propel her husband toward some kind of financial stability and success had died in their tracks. Now the house was Charlie’s space, and Rose’s refuge was the garden. The”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“He noticed that in the sunlight her brown hair had honey-colored highlights. She looked lit up, from without and within.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“Sylvie would keep boycotting boring classes to read in parks. She wouldn’t settle for less than true love, even though her sisters had issued a collective sigh when she told them that Ernie had asked her out on a proper date and she’d turned him down. She would wait, forever if necessary, for a man who saw the expanse of her, the way her father had.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“And besides, you can’t fail when you’re doing what you love.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“Sylvie smiled at this. “She’s still a baby,” she said. “Do you remember how young we were when we were twenty-five? If there’s something wrong, you have time to fix it.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“You have to keep growing, or you don’t live”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“Alice turned her face upward, as if to study the night sky, as if she required a different vantage point to sort through what was inside her.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“I want to build more infrastructures of kindness,”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“She and her brother-in-law were both struggling to inhabit their own skin,”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“With her eyes closed, Sylvie placed herself on the wide expanse of her brother-in-law’s uncertainty. It resembled one of the foggy, rambling moors she and her sisters had loved in Victorian novels. Sylvie felt at home on the rough terrain, filling her lungs with murky air. Since Charlie’s death, she’d felt like she was spilling out of her edges and messily trying to scoop herself up at the same time. Her sisters and mother were safe, with their aspirations and routines; Sylvie was her heartbreak and loss.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“We look out the window, or into ourselves, for something more.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“You’re too young to really understand that life is short, but it is. I didn’t want to stop you when you were walking away from something that didn’t matter to do something that did. You and I are cut from the same cloth, baby girl. Neither of us would expect school or work to fill us up. We look out the window, or into ourselves, for something more.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“He was vast, and beautiful, and more present in the gift of baby formula to a young mother than in any day he’d spent at the paper factory. He was his acts of kindness,”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“want more than that, you know. I want you to feel better. To love your life.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“And just like that, the two little girls in their beds on 18th Place were silenced. The child inside Julia lay wide-eyed in the dark, knowing that she was Jo, but only because Sylvie was Beth.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful