Emily Giffin Quotations | Page 2

Buried beneath disappointment and fear, anger and pride, I just might find it in my heart to forgive.

You see yourself as very average, ordinary. And there is nothing ordinary about you, Rachel." (Something Borrowed)

(mother)" She used to tell me to get my nose out of my book and go get some fresh air.

The best reason to pray is that God is really there. In praying our unbelief starts to melt. God moves smack into the middle of even an ordinary day.

But I have learned that you make your own happiness, that part of going for what you want means losing something else. And when the stakes are high, the losses can be that much greater.

Songs and smells will bring you back to a moment in time more than anything else. It's amazing how much can be conjured with a few notes of a song or a solitary whiff of a room. A song you didn't even pay attention to at the time, a place that you didn't even know had a particular smell. I wonder what will someday bring back Dex and our few months together. Maybe the sound of Dido's voice. Maybe the scent of the Aveda shampoo I've been using all summer.

I think the issue of female friendship really resonates well with women, ... So many women have a friend like Darcy or can relate to the feeling of being second-fiddle to a friend.

That's how life is. Sometimes there are happy endings, sometimes there aren't, and more often there are shades of gray.

Blurring the line between friendship and attraction was a surefire to lose a friend.

Anything worthwhile is tough.

And although one broken heart doesn't make me an expert in the subject, I believe you need both things - time and an emotional replacement - to fully mend one.

I do not expect to get what I want, so I don't. And I don't even try.

We both have a lot of growing-up to do... A lot of the world to see & figure out on our own." -- Leo

The whole "misery loves company" thing never applies more than when you're breaking up. The thought that the other person is doing fine is simply too much to bear.

What's the point of being sad?" he says. "We're here now.

You’ll never regret being a good friend.

My relationship with my sister is so central to my life. She's my closest friend, my biggest supporter, and I know she would say the same about me.

Then he asks if he can kiss me. It is a question I don’t usually like. Just do it, I always think.

I'm going to keep seeing him as much as I can. We'll see what happens," I say, realizing that just "seeing what happens" is my version of "going for it.

Where we belong is often where we least expect to find ourselves—a place that we may have willed ourselves to forget, but that the heart remembers forever.

I think that we have to consciously be aware that every moment we're in, every different stage in our lives, we can control.

you'd do anything to get a soul mate back, right?… I mean, that's the nature of soul mates.

I'm glad you were both here," I finally manage, thinking how strange it is to be standing with the two people who made you, something most kids take for granted every day of their lives.

I had never understood what people meant when they said they'd rather be alone if they couldn't be in the right relationship. Now I got it.

In my stories, I think, as I've gotten older, the characters have become stronger and more independent, and more capable of making unconventional decisions.

Really-nothing is unforgivable if you truly love someone.

And then there is our personal history. Memories only we share. Things not another living soul would understand.

You can run but you can't hide

When I write, I picture the characters a certain way in my head, and they're not like any actor or actress. It's almost hard for me to let go of my ideas as to the way they look.

Despite the fact that I have no regrets about how things turned out in my life, I still can't help wanting to understand my intense relationship with Leo, as well as that turbulent time between adolescence and adulthood when everything feels raw and invigorating and scary-and why those feelings are all coming back to me now.

People generally didn't cheat in good relationships.

After all, I think, isn't it always about a boy?

I'm very open in terms of sharing bits about my life, but I think it's very easy to get a distorted sense of who anyone is through social media.

What if two people want to be your partner, then what?

We are in love and meant to be together.

In the final seconds before sleep, I wish I could go back and undo everything, give those little girls another chance.

It's amazing to me how few guys know their friends' birthdays.

The person who wants out of the relationship always gets her way.

Yet here we are, two children and a broken promise later, standing before each other, just the way we stood that day at the alter, with equal parts love and hope. And once again, I close my eyes, ready to take a leap of faith, ready for the long, hard road ahead. I have no idea how it's going to turn out, but then again, I never really did.

There are two kinds of women--those who eat in a crisis and those who lose their appetite in a crisis.

Sweetened ice tea is one of the things I love about the South, right up there with homemade biscuits and cheese grits.

I don't convey that I can be moody or a perfectionist or that I'm a nervous person, but I am all those things. It's just not going to shine through when you're posting a picture.

But I have learned that you can't just create your own timetable and will it to come true.

ONE MORE CHNCE. Words that my mother heard, more than once. Words that women debate. Whether you CAN forgive and whether you SHOULD trust. I think of all the judgment from society, friends, and family, the overwhelming consensus seeming to be that you should not grant someone who betrayed you a second chance. That you should do everything you can to keep the knife out of your back, and to protect your heart and pride. Cowards give second chances. Fools give second chances. And I am no coward, no fool.

She wonders what fool ever said that it's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all - she has never disagreed with something so much.

I'm not trying to convey a message, I'm just trying to tell a story.

How different this moment feels, for so many reasons. I tell myself that no two loves are identical - but that I don't have to compare anymore.

But I am learning that perfection isn't what matters. In fact, it's the very thing that can destroy you if you let it.

This is why you should never, ever get your hopes up. This is why you should see the glass as half empty. So when the whole thing spills, you aren’t as devastated.

I've always loved sister stories in fiction, from the time I was little, reading about Beezus and Ramona. I've always wanted to write a sister story.

Things are what they are and there's no point dwelling in the past or wondering what could have been.

In days that follow, I discover that anger is easier to handle than grief.

Although I'm sure there are plenty of tall, gorgeous, life-of-the-party guys who are also true to their wives, I happen to believe that a disproportionate number of them are cheaters.

I try to be true to the characters that I've created and sometimes I disagree with them, but their opinions about the story and the characters really matter to me.

Love is seldom—almost never—an even proposition. Someone always loves more.

He nods, as if to acknowledge that endings are almost always a little sad, even when there is something to look forward to on the other side.

True love is supposed to make you into a better person-uplift you.

I always find something in common with my protagonist, particularly when I write in the first person.

No, scratch the word "career." Careers are for people who wish to advance. I only want to survive, draw a paycheck.

My head spins as I glance away, refusing to get sucked back into his gaze when so much is at risk.

A son is a son 'til he gets a wife, but a daughter is a daughter all her life.

There are no absolutes in relationships. You can't take anything for granted. You can count on absolutely nothing but the unexpected. You only get in trouble when you start thinking that you're some kind of exception to the rule.

And like a favorite old movie, sometimes the sameness in a friend is what you like the most about her.

This time, I whispered that I loved him too. Then, I silently listed all the reason: I loved him for his gentleness. I loved him for being an amazing catch yet still vulnerable enough to be insecure. But most of all, I loved him for loving me.

I write about relationships and I try to create real-life characters.

I miss him in so many ways, but right now I miss him in the way you always miss someone when you're single among a room full of couples.

But now we have time. Endless time stretches before us.

Things certainly aren't the way you imagine them when you're a kid and dreaming big dreams about what your life as a grown-up will look like.

Some of my very closest friends are my guy friends, going back to the third grade, so I believe in the integrity of the male-female friendship.

Nothing is ever perfect. It is what you make of it.

I love him wholly and unconditionally and without reservation. I love him enough to sacrifice a friendship. I love him enough to accept my own happiness and use it, in turn, to make him happy back.

His loyalty, so fierce and unwavering, makes my eyes water and heart ache.

I think the most well-adjusted people live in the present with an eye toward the future - I'm not among those.

It always takes two. For relationships to work, for them to break apart, for them to be fixed.

Happiness is the best revenge, you know? Just be happy. It's a choice.

I'm nostalgic and I do think about a "what if."

...recognizing that there is more heartbreak in continuous disappointment than a void...

I think of how each person in a marriage owes it to the other to find individual happiness, even in a shared life. That this is the only way to grow together, instead of apart.

Maybe that's what it all comes down to. Love, not as a surge of passion, but as a choice to commit to something, someone, no matter what obstacles or temptations stand in the way. And maybe making that choice, again and again, day in and day out, year after year, says more about love than never having a choice to make at all.

I think some of the biggest time sucks are regret and guilt, and I have to fight against those things all the time. In a way, it's a good thing, because it can motivate you to make amends and forgive, but regrets are really, I think, a supreme waste of time in many ways.

...love is the sum of our choices, the strength of our commitments, the ties that bind us together.

Love and friendship. They are what make us who we are, and what can change us, if we let them.

You can only control your own actions. Not other people’s reactions.