01UndatedIf you love someone, if you think you could make them happy for the rest of your life together, then nothing should stop you. You should be prepared to take them as they are and deal with the consequences. Relationships aren't neat and clean - they're ugly and messy, and they make almost no sense except to the two people in them. If you truly love someone, you accept the circumstances, you don't hide behind themTaylor Jenkins Reid / quote ↗
02UndatedYou should know this about the rich: they always want to get richer. It is never boring, getting your hands on more money.Taylor Jenkins Reid / quote ↗
03UndatedI liked being needed by him. I liked making his food for him, running his baths for him, massaging his muscles. I liked caring for him, taking care of him. It made me feel like I had a real purpose. It felt so good to make him feel even the littlest bit better.Taylor Jenkins Reid / quote ↗
04UndatedI put my back against the wall. I slide down to the floor. I imagine Ryan sitting next to me. I imagine him rubbing my back, the way he did when my grandfather died. I imagine him saying, "She's going to a better place. She's OK." I imagine the way my grandfather might have done this for my grandmother when she lost her own mom or her own grandmother. I imagine my grandmother sitting where I am now, my grandfather kneeling beside her, telling her all the things I want to be told. Holding her the way that only someone in particular can hold you. When I'm her age, when I'm lying in a hospital bed, ready to die, whom will I be thinking of?It's Ryan. It's always been Ryan. Just because I can live without him doesn't mean I want to.And I don't. I don't want to. I want to hear his voice. The way it is rough but sometimes smooth and almost soulful. I want to see his face, with his stubble from never shaving down to the skin. I want to smell him again. I want to hold the roughness of his hands. I want to feel the way they envelop mine, dwarfing them, making me feel small.I need my husband.Taylor Jenkins Reid / quote ↗
05UndatedWhy have I spent so long settling for less when I know damn well the world expects more?Taylor Jenkins Reid / quote ↗
06UndatedWhen you dig just the tiniest bit beneath the surface, everyone's love life is original and interesting and nuanced and defies any easy definition.Taylor Jenkins Reid / quote ↗
07UndatedI think I was just overly excitable about it because I loved him in a way I'd never thought possible. I knew that if I lost him, if I had to live without him, it would crush me. I needed him and I didn't just need him now, I needed him in the future. I needed him always. I wanted him always. I wanted him to be the father of my children. It's such a silly statement now; people say it all the time, they throw it around like it's nothing. And some people treat it like it is nothing, but it wasn't nothing to me. I wanted to have children with him someday. I wanted to be a parent with him. I wanted to have a child that was half him and half me. I wanted to commit to him and sacrifice for him. I wanted to lose part of myself in order to gain some of him. I wanted to marry him. So I wanted him to have meant it. I wanted it to be real.Taylor Jenkins Reid / quote ↗
08UndatedSometimes divorce isn’t an earth-shattering loss. Sometimes it’s just two people waking up out of a fog.Taylor Jenkins Reid / quote ↗
09UndatedAnd here’s why it worked: man or woman, gay, straight, bisexual, you name it, we all just want to be teased.Taylor Jenkins Reid / quote ↗
11UndatedWhat’s that saying? Behind every gorgeous woman, there’s a man sick of screwing her? Well, it works both ways. No one mentions that part.Taylor Jenkins Reid / quote ↗
14UndatedFrom experience, I can tell you that if you go around trying to figure out what's fair in life or whether you deserve something or not, that's a rabbit hole that is hard to climb out of.Taylor Jenkins Reid / quote ↗
15UndatedIt doesn't matter if we don't mean to do the things we do. It doesn't mean if it was an accident or a mistake. It doesn't even matter if we think this is all up to fate. Because regardless of our destiny, we still have to answer for our actions. We make choices, big and small, every day of our lives, and those choices have consequences.Taylor Jenkins Reid / quote ↗
16UndatedSweetheart, I’m telling you, you love someone like that, you love them the right way, and no time would be enough. Doesn’t matter if you had thirty years,” she tells me. “It wouldn’t be enough.Taylor Jenkins Reid / quote ↗
17UndatedHollow and empty are terrible ways to feel when you're used to being full of joy. But it's not so bad when you're used to feeling full of pain. Hollow feels okay. Empty feels like a beginning. Which is nice, because for so long you have felt like you were at the end.Taylor Jenkins Reid / quote ↗
18UndatedYou start to understand that grief is chronic. That it's more about remission and relapse than it is about a cure. What that means to you is that you can't simply wait for it to be over. You have to move through it, like swimming in an undertow.Taylor Jenkins Reid / quote ↗
19UndatedI once thought that grief was chronic, that all you could do was appreciate the good days and take them along with the bad. And then I started to think that maybe the good days aren't just days; maybe the good days can be good weeks, good months, good years. Now I wonder if grief isn't something like a shell. You wear it for a long time and then one day you realize you've outgrown it. So you put it down.Taylor Jenkins Reid / quote ↗
20UndatedWhen you lose someone you love, it's hard to imagine that you'll ever feel better. That, one day, you'll manage to be in a good mood simply because the weather is nice or the barista at the coffee shop on the corner remembered your order. But it does happen. If you're patient and you work at it.Taylor Jenkins Reid / quote ↗
21UndatedI find myself smiling, finally. I guess I do remember how to do it. You just turn the corners of your mouth up.Taylor Jenkins Reid / quote ↗
22UndatedI think that perhaps everyone has a moment that splits their life in two. When you look back on your own time line there's a sharp spike somewhere along the way, some event that changed you, changed your life more than the others. A moment that creates a before and an after. Maybe it's when you meet your love or you figure out your life's passion or you have your first child. Maybe it's something wonderful. Maybe it's something tragic. But when it happens it tints your memories, shifts your perspective on your own life and it suddenly seems as if everyone you've been through falls under the label of pre or post.Taylor Jenkins Reid / quote ↗
23UndatedI know there may be universes out there where I made different choices and they led me somewhere else, led me to someone else. And my heart breaks for every single version of me that didn't end up with you.Taylor Jenkins Reid / quote ↗
24UndatedTrue love doesn’t always last,” I say. “It doesn’t always have to be for a lifetime.” “Right. And that doesn’t mean it’s not true love,” Jesse says. It was real. And now it’s over. And that’s OK. “I am who I am because I loved you once,” he says. “I am who I am because I loved you once, too,” I say. And then we say good-bye.Taylor Jenkins Reid / quote ↗
