Hello Beautiful Quotes

“It felt like she’d been holding an umbrella to deny that it was raining, and now the umbrella was gone, and she was standing in a storm.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“She would celebrate whoever her beloved happened to be; she would be curious about his distinctiveness and sink into a love that was unblinkingly honest.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“Julia loved living in this moment, with her life directly in front of her instead of off in the distance. She’d spent her entire childhood waiting to grow up so she could be here, ringing all the bells of adulthood.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“Emeline had always seemed occupied with watching everyone else and trying to be helpful, but she’d stayed on the sidelines, as if it weren’t her turn to live.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“Nothing and no one existed in a vacuum.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“between him and his sister-in-law on the bench that night, but it felt dangerous, like a shining dagger that could cut through his life as if it were made of paper.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“Sylvie was composed of question marks and feelings that she didn’t know what to do with, as if her hands were full and she was wearing pants with no pockets.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“He’d followed her every instruction, but eventually the directions had led him so far away from himself that he was no longer a person.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“She was no longer who she used to be, and she wasn’t yet whoever she was becoming.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“William felt the truth of this: He was lucky. Julia had already given him so much. All she seemed to want from him was his love and his enthusiasm for her plans. He could keep providing both of those things, easily, and he hoped that would be enough.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“When Julia was in middle school, a girl had accused her and her sisters of being a coven of witches. Julia hadn’t known what a coven was and had to look the word up. The definition had delighted her, and she’d hoped the girl was correct.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“I thought I needed a husband, because that’s what we were told as little girls, right? Or maybe not told but shown. It didn’t occur to me that I might be better on my own.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“With his daughter gone, the man’s face never opened again.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“He didn’t blame his wife for this conditional acceptance; he’d grown up with parents who’d never accepted him at all.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“he knew immediately that he would replay this conversation later, when he was alone. These felt like the words, and sentences, he had been waiting for.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“With no sleep, the days took on the emotional cast—and the loud losses—of the night.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“This wasn’t on her calendar, which meant this moment could exist as a barnacle on the outside of her real life.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“But you built us an infrastructure of kindness.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“By not being shared, their love story remained intact”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“The four sisters looked like different versions of the same person: They were parts of a whole.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“He had given her substance by telling her story.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“It had taken William a while to get a handle on the differences between the twins, but he now had no trouble telling them apart. Cecelia always had flecks of paint on her hands and clothes, and she went from good-spirited to annoyed with startling speed. She liked to try out stern looks on people, in a way that reminded William of Julia. Emeline was more placid and slower to react than her twin. She was the quietest of the four sisters, but when the phone rang in the small house, it was usually a request for Emeline to babysit. William once had the thought that his fiancée seemed to stride about the world with a conductor’s wand, while Sylvie brandished a book and Cecelia a paintbrush. Emeline, though, kept her hands free in order to be helpful or to pick up and soothe a neighborhood child. Every time Emeline had seen William since his injury, she’d asked if she could carry something for him or open the door”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“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

“I know you can do this on your own,” he said. “But, if you’ll allow me, I’d like to help.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“she had been reimagining herself. She was Julia’s wild hair, she was the lake her husband had once been carried out of, and no matter what happened next, she was love.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“It’s because you know that more is possible that you’ll always see the pointlessness in following a stupid rule or clocking in and out of a boring class. Most people can’t see that distinction, so they just do as they’re told. Of course, this makes them bored and irritated, but they think that’s the human condition. You and I are lucky enough to see that it doesn’t have to be that way.” The”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“Has any one supposed it lucky to be born? I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it. I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash’d babe, and am not contain’d between my hat and boots, And peruse manifold objects, no two alike and every one good, The earth good and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good. —Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” Verse 7”
― 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!”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“Julia had accepted a job far away from her sisters and home. That collection of weeks had pulled her life out from under her like a rug. Julia had devoted herself to not losing control of her circumstances like that ever again, and she hadn’t, until recently.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“Sylvie and her sisters had known themselves under their father’s gaze. And with that gaze gone, the threads that had tied their family so tightly together had loosened. What had been effortless would now take effort. What had been home for all of them was now merely Rose’s house.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful