Genevieve Novak > Quotes

“There's some sick and painful satisfaction in being handed confirmation of our worst fears on a platter by someone whose approval means so much.”
― Genevieve Novak, No Hard Feelings

“If you aren't thriving somewhere, it doesn't automatically make you the problem.”
― Genevieve Novak, No Hard Feelings

“I don't know. I'm always happier in my memory than I am in real life." "I think that is called depression.”
― Genevieve Novak, No Hard Feelings

“I know, without knowing how I know, that everything we had is gone. We can be strangers again, and it's better that way.”
― Genevieve Novak, No Hard Feelings

“There’s hardly any of me left to give.”
― Genevieve Novak, No Hard Feelings

“Every minute we're together is a battle for control. I always have to be on. Not too clingy, not too argumentative; very clever, very quick; always horny, always amenable. It's exhausting when I'm losing, but exhilarating when I'm winning. When he pecks me on the cheek unexpectedly, or I make him laugh, or if I've seen a documentary he hasn't, I'm above the clouds. And in the next breath, he'll unlace his fingers from mine, or stare at his phone when I'm trying to talk to him, or say something like, 'Mm, I don't know if you're right bout that,' and my self-esteem plummets beneath the earth and melts into nothing.”
― Genevieve Novak, No Hard Feelings

“Maybe all my problems would be solved if I got the fat sucked out of my thighs. Things just fall into place more easily for skinny-legged women. Look at Alexa Chung.”
― Genevieve Novak, No Hard Feelings

“Happiness isn’t a flat plane that you climb up onto and coast on. People just have nice moments here and there to stop them throwing themselves onto train tracks.”
― Genevieve Novak, No Hard Feelings

“I don’t know if Bec means what she said. I don’t know if our friendship will ever truly recover, or if we’ll fall apart again without the pressure of a guest list. Maybe things won’t be okay. They might just be, and I’ll need to make peace with it.”
― Genevieve Novak, No Hard Feelings

“The rear-view mirror is for learning lessons, and everything I want is on the road ahead.”
― Genevieve Novak, No Hard Feelings

“mentioned him in passing in”
― Genevieve Novak, Crushing

“People talk about their twenties as this energetic, colourful learning experience — but I don't know when it's supposed to get easier.”
― Genevieve Novak, No Hard Feelings

“The problem is that kind of thinking means you’re going to punish yourself forever. You think you don’t deserve happiness or love or acceptance, so you make decisions to reinforce those beliefs. You stay in unsatisfying relationships because you don’t feel you deserve better. You don’t ask for what you want because you don’t think you have the right to ask for anything. You just stay unhappy and self-pitying, and then you punish yourself some more, and again, and again, and again. So until we teach you to value yourself, we can’t teach you how to make sure other people value you.”
― Genevieve Novak, No Hard Feelings

“Bec messaged me earlier in the week to ‘suggest’ I borrow Annie’s bubblegum-coloured Scanlan Theodore dress, but because I’m not a size six and because wearing pink makes me look like I’m cosplaying Jigglypuff,”
― Genevieve Novak, No Hard Feelings

“The single most underrated quality in a person was silliness. Of all the traits one could possess — empathy, patience, unnaturally high alcohol tolerance — silliness reigned supreme.

Whoever you spent your life with, if they didn’t know how to take a joke and drag it out until it was clinging on with its fingernails then pull it back in and make you wonder how you ever saw the brighter side of things without them, then you weren’t having enough fun.

Life was just better when it was filled with the kind of laughter that started as a shriek and dissolved into silent gasps for air and made your stomach hurt.”
― Genevieve Novak, Crushing