Hello Beautiful Quotes

“Stop thinking about who you were when you were living the wrong life, William. You’re built for the life you’re living now. You have a gift for seeing what’s wrong with these boys. And besides, you can’t fail when you’re doing what you love.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“Even though she’d stopped considering herself Catholic after her father’s funeral, she recognized the religion’s retributive justice in her bones. She was surprised, though, to find that she’d unconsciously kept that belief system. She would have thought that she’d evolved past the guilt that was laced through Catholicism and her childhood, past the concept of an eye for an eye. But apparently she had bought into that retaliative framework, perhaps in the pews of St. Procopius as a child. Sylvie had betrayed her sister, so her body had betrayed itself.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“I knew that if I never found my great love, I would rather be single than settle for a mediocre relationship. I can’t bear to pretend happiness.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“She’d carried a hesitation inside her ever since he’d met her at his basketball game when she was fourteen. 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

“She knew, when she was near William, that she had the capacity to raise these giant, beautiful sails and go.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“In the dream, William was swimming away from his mother and father, while they swam away from him. And he had told his wife and daughter to go away. So many people leaving each other. There had been a claustrophobic atmosphere in the dream, a foreboding, as if they were all about to find out they were swimming in a fishbowl. They were trying to get away from one another, and they were doomed to fail.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“Sylvie thought, This is worth dying for.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“I could be mad at you. I could scream at you. But I won’t. You raised me to take care of myself, and I will.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“Kent’s affection for William was too clear and too uncomplicated. It shone on William like the sun. No one had ever loved him unconditionally like this, and that love, when he was the most undeserving he’d ever been in his life, made”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“When Sylvie was a child, she’d watched in amazement when friends, upset about a bad day at school or a slight from a boy they had a crush on, burst into tears at the sight of their mother. Their mother was their safe space, and so, with her, they felt every iota of their feelings.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“You’re built for the life you’re living now. You have a gift for seeing what’s wrong with these boys. And besides, you can’t fail when you’re doing what you love.” William was silent, considering this. “Do you not get it?” Arash had said, exasperated. William started to respond, but the older man cut him off: “It doesn’t matter if you get it, actually. It’s true.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“Julia specialized in answers. From the time she was old enough to speak, she’d bossed her sisters around, pointing out their problems and providing solutions. Sometimes her sisters found this irritating, but they would also admit that having a “master troubleshooter” in their”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“When he woke up in the hospital, dry, and saw Sylvie on a chair next to him, his first thought was that he'd failed. The fact that he had failed meant he had to continue to walk forward with his life history--his mistakes--slung over his shoulders like a heavy backpack. This fact exhausted him, but he was too tired to reject it.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“own body. Her sister, who had not been her sister for over two decades. Julia coughed, and inside the cough was a strange sound, as if her insides had begun to cry, without tears reaching her surface. Her ecosystem was changing beneath her skin.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“Since the diagnosis, Sylvie had returned to Leaves of Grass. She wanted to absorb Whitman's optimistic take on death; she wanted to share the poet's open mind about what came next. Whenever Sylvie felt a quiver of fear, she repeated to herself the line: And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“Sylvie had almost missed this life with this man, and because of this near-miss, she appreciated their moments together, even as they accumulated.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“Imagine that I'm a house, and when I find my great love, I'll become the entire world. Our love will show me so much more than I'll be able to see on my own.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“It’s a girl!” Cecelia cried. The elephant evaporated, the squeezing stopped, and Julia was herself again. Mostly herself, anyway. She realized that she was most certainly a mammal and had the ability to shake the world apart and create a human when she unleashed her power. She was a mother. This identity shuddered through her, welcome like water to a dry riverbed. It felt so elemental and true that Julia must have unknowingly been a mother all along, simply waiting to be joined by her child. Julia had never felt like this before. Her brain was a gleaming engine, and her resources felt immense. She was clarity. Julia held the baby for what felt like only a few seconds before the nurse whisked the infant to the nursery to be washed and wrapped in a blanket. Cecelia left the room to tell the others the news. Julia shook her head, in disbelief and joy. She couldn’t believe how fast her mind was moving, but perhaps these truths had been inside her all along and were accessible now because she’d given birth. She saw everything so clearly.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“She had spent her whole life trying to fix other people—her parents, her sisters, William—but that had been a fruitless endeavor; she could see that now. She couldn’t keep her father alive or her mother in Chicago or Cecelia celibate or William ambitious. She’d just been fine-tuning her skills for now, for what mattered, for motherhood. She would protect and celebrate her baby girl and let everyone else do whatever they wanted. With her daughter, Julia was complete. She realized, amazed: I love myself. That had somehow never been true before. William entered the room with a nervous smile on his face. Julia had been frustrated with her husband for weeks, but inside her new warmth, she felt affection for him. She was love. She beamed at William and thought: I never needed you. Did you know that? I thought I needed a husband, but I don’t actually need anyone. I could have done everything by myself. William bent his long body to hug her, and Julia wrapped her arms around his neck. She told him how excited she was for him to see the baby girl she’d made.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“We’re not separated from the world by our own edges.” Charlie set down his beer glass, empty now, and rubbed his hand up and down his arm, as an example of one of his 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.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“I know it sounds silly, but I’m proud of myself. I guess for living a brave life.”
― 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”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“Sylvie reached out for the notebook. Like him, she’d grown up going to confession in church. Entering the dark booth and lowering herself to the kneeler. Confessing her sins to the screen that separated her from the priest. 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

“They were too showy, too public. Deep love between two people was a private, wordless endeavor,”
― 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”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“it was the beginning of November, and New York City was toying with the idea of winter.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“Catholicism succeeded because it kept its parishioners feeling guilty and therefore in the pews every Sunday,”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“William worked on his passing too, so he could feed the ball to the best players in the park. He wanted to keep his place on the court, and he knew that if he made the other boys better, he had value.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“deliberate about how they lived, wouldn’t tolerate assholes, and always had each other’s back. “How can I help?”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful