Madison Miller > Madison's Quotes

“the contemporary trend was “to treat mourning as morbid self-indulgence, and to give social admiration to the bereaved who hide their grief so fully that no one would guess anything had happened.”
― Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

“Don't ignore half of me so you can fit me into a box. Don't do that.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“I’m under absolutely no obligation to make sense to you.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“It’s always been fascinating to me how things can be simultaneously true and false, how people can be good and bad all in one, how someone can love you in a way that is beautifully selfless while serving themselves ruthlessly.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“Sometimes reality comes crashing down on you. Other times reality simply waits, patiently, for you to run out of the energy it takes to deny it.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“Heartbreak is a loss. Divorce is a piece of paper.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“Make them pay you what they would pay a white man.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“When you're given an opportunity to change your life, be ready to do whatever it takes to make it happen. The world doesn't give things, you take things.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“Evelyn looks at me with purpose. "Do you understand what I'm telling you? When you're given an opportunity to change your life, be ready to do whatever it takes to make it happen. The world doesn't give things, you take things. If you learn one thing from me, it should probably be that.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“You have to find a job that makes your heart feel big instead of one that makes it feel small.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“Be wary of men with something to prove.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“She always made sure the bad was outweighed by so much good. I...well, I didn't do that for her. I made it fifty-fifty. Which is about the cruelest thing you can do to someone you love, give them just enough good to make them stick through a hell of a lot of bad.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“You can be sorry about something and not regret it,” Evelyn says.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“You wonder what it must be like to be a man, to be so confident that the final say is yours.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“Do you think I'm a whore?” Harry pulled over to the side of the road and turned to me. “I think you're brilliant. I think you're tough. And I think the word whore is something ignorant people throw around when they have nothing else.

… “Isn't it awfully convenient,” Harry added, “that when men make the rules, the one thing that's looked down on the most is the one thing that would bear them the greatest threat? Imagine if every single woman on the planet wanted something in exchange when she gave up her body. You'd all be ruling the place. An armed populace. Only men like me would stand a chance against you. And that's the last thing those assholes want, a world run by people like you and me.”

I laughed, my eyes still puffy and tired from crying. “So am I a whore or not?” “Who knows?” he said. “We're all whores, really, in some way or another. At least in Hollywood.” … “But I like you this way. I like you impure and scrappy and formidable. I like the Evelyn Hugo who sees the world for what it is and then goes out there and wrestles what she wants out of it. So, you know, put whatever label you want on it, just don't change. That would be the real tragedy.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“But if you have to go, then go. Go if it hurts. Go if it's time. Just go knowing you were loved, that I will never forget you, that you will live in everything Connor and I do. Go knowing I love you purely, Harry, that you were an amazing father. Go knowing I told you all my secrets. Because you were my best friend.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“People are messy, and love can be ugly. I’m inclined to always err on the side of compassion.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“If I want things to change, I have to change how I do things. And probably drastically.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“My mother raised me to be polite, to be demure. I have long operated under the idea that civility is subservience. But it hasn't gotten me very far, that type of kindness. The world respects people who think they should be running it.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“Why have I spent so long settling for less when I know damn well the world expects more?”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“And taking pride in your beauty is a damning act. Because you allow yourself to believe that the only thing notable about yourself is something with a very short shelf life.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“You don't have to make yourself OK for a good mother; a good mother makes herself OK for you.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“Forgiveness is different from absolution.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid

“And it will be the tragedy of my life that I cannot love you enough to make you mine. That you cannot be loved enough to be anyone’s.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“Sometimes divorce isn’t an earth-shattering loss. Sometimes it’s just two people waking up out of a fog.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“If there are all different types of soul mates,” I told Harry one afternoon, when the two of us were sitting out on the patio with Connor, “then you are one of mine.” Harry was wearing a pair of shorts and no shirt. Connor was lying on his chest. He hadn’t shaved that morning, and his stubble was coming in. It had just the slightest gray patch under his chin. Looking at him with her, I realized how much they looked alike. Same long lashes, same pert lips. Harry held Connor to his chest with one hand and grabbed my free hand with the other. “I am absolutely positive that I need you more than I’ve ever needed another living soul,” he said. “The only exception being—” “Connor,” I said. We both smiled. For the rest of our lives, we would say that. The only exception to absolutely everything was Connor.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“That’s the part I was stuck in, the part where you accept the apology because it’s easier than addressing the root of the problem,”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“When 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, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“It is two A.M., and you are tired. You miss the love of your life. You want to go home. You would rather be with her, in bed, hearing the light buzz of her snoring, watching her sleep, than be here.
[...]
You imagine a world where the two of you can go out to dinner together on a Saturday night and no one thinks twice about it. It makes you want to cry, the simplicity of it, the smallness of it. You have worked so hard for a life so grand. And now all you want are the smallest freedoms. The daily peace of loving plainly.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“That is the fastest way to ruin a woman’s reputation, after all—to imply that she has not adequately threaded the needle that is being sexually satisfying without ever appearing to desire sexual satisfaction.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo