Serena > Serena's Quotes

“People come in and out of your life. For a time they are your world; they are everything. And then one day they’re not. There’s no telling how long you will have them near.”
― Jenny Han, P.S. I Still Love You

“There’s a Korean word my grandma taught me. It’s called jung. It’s the connection between two people that can’t be severed, even when love turns to hate. You still have those old feelings for them; you can’t ever completely shake them loose of you; you will always have tenderness in your heart for them.”
― Jenny Han, P.S. I Still Love You

“I say, “In the contract we said we wouldn’t break each other’s hearts. What if we do it again?” Fiercely he says, “What if we do? If we’re so guarded, it’s not going to be anything. Let’s do it fucking for real, Lara Jean. Let’s go all in. No more contract. No more safety net. You can break my heart. Do whatever you want with it.”
― Jenny Han, P.S. I Still Love You

“I know now that I don’t want to love or be loved in half measures. I want it all, and to have it all, you have to risk it all.”
― Jenny Han, P.S. I Still Love You

“When you lose someone and it still hurts, that's when you know the love was real.”
― Jenny Han, P.S. I Still Love You

“So much of love is chance. There's something scary and wonderful about that.”
― Jenny Han, P.S. I Still Love You

“Sometimes I like you so much I can’t stand it. It fills up inside me, all the way to the brim, and I feel like I could overflow. I like you so much I don’t know what to do with it. My heart beats so fast when I know I’m going to see you again. And then, when you look at me the way you do, I feel like the luckiest girl in the world.”
― Jenny Han, P.S. I Still Love You

“So I take Peter’s hand; I put it on my heart. I tell him, “You have to take good care of this, because it’s yours.”
― Jenny Han, P.S. I Still Love You

“Things feel like they'll be forever, but they aren't. Love can go away, or people can, without even meaning to. Nothing is guaranteed.”
― Jenny Han, P.S. I Still Love You

“I suppose you can't hold on to old things just for the sake of holding on.”
― Jenny Han, P.S. I Still Love You

“I don’t think it was our time then. I guess it isn’t now, either.” John looks over at me, his gaze steady. “But one day maybe it will be.”
― Jenny Han, P.S. I Still Love You

“Us," Peter corrects. "I did it for us." He links our fingers together. "It's you and me, kid.”
― Jenny Han, P.S. I Still Love You

“He looks at me in such a way that I know for sure-he's never looked at another girl quite like this.
And the I'm in his arms, and we're hugging and kissing, and we're both shaking,because we both know-this is the night we become real.”
― Jenny Han, P.S. I Still Love You

“If two people are meant to be, they'll find their way to each other.”
― Jenny Han, P.S. I Still Love You

“It could have happened lots of ways. But this is the way it happened. This is the path we took. This is our story.”
― Jenny Han, P.S. I Still Love You

“...When I get you back, I’m gonna put that necklace back around your neck and pin you.” He tries to hold my eyes with his own. 'Like the 1950s.”
― Jenny Han, P.S. I Still Love You

“When it’s time to leave, we put on our shoes, kiss Daddy good-bye, and tumble out the front door. Waiting for us on the street in front of his car is Peter with a bouquet of cellophane-wrapped pink carnations. “Happy birthday, kid,” he says. Kitty’s eyes bulge. “Are those for me?” He laughs. “Who else would they be for? Hurry and get in the car.” Kitty turns to me, her eyes bright, her smile as wide as her face. I’m smiling too. “Are you coming too, Lara Jean?” I shake my head. “No, there’s only room for two.” “You’re my only girl today, kid,” Peter says, and Kitty runs to him and snatches the flowers out of his hand. Gallantly, he opens the door for her. He shuts it and turns and winks at me. “Don’t be jealous, Covey.” I’ve never liked him more than in this moment.”
― Jenny Han, P.S. I Still Love You

“It felt like the world had divided into two different types of people, those who had felt pain and those who had yet to.”
― Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

“I remember these things clearly because that was how my mother loved you, not through white lies and constant verbal affirmation, but in subtle observations of what brought you joy, pocketed away to make you feel comforted and cared for without even realizing it.”
― Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

“Hers was tougher than tough love. It was brutal, industrial-strength. A sinewy love that never gave way to an inch of weakness. It was a love that saw what was best for you ten steps ahead, and didn't care if it hurt like hell in the meantime. When I got hurt, she felt it so deeply, it was as though it were her own affliction. She was guilty only of caring too much. I realize this now, only in retrospect. No one in this would would ever love me as much as my mother, and she would never let me forget it.”
― Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

“There was no one in the world that was ever as critical or could make me feel as hideous as my mother, but there was no one, not even Peter, who ever made me feel as beautiful.”
― Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

“In fact, she was both my first and second words: Umma, then Mom. I called to her in two languages. Even then I must have known that no one would ever love me as much as she would.”
― Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

“To be a loving mother was to be known for a service, but to be a lovely mother was to possess a charm all your own.”
― Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

“Food was how my mother expressed her love. No matter how critical or cruel she could seem—constantly pushing me to meet her intractable expectations—I could always feel her affection radiating from the lunches she packed and the meals she prepared for me just the way I liked them.”
― Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

“I had spent my adolescence trying to blend in with my peers in suburban America, and had come of age feeling like my belonging was something to prove. Something that was always in the hands of other people to be given and never my own to take, to decide which side I was on, whom I was allowed to align with. I could never be of both worlds, only half in and half out, waiting to be ejected at will by someone with greater claim than me. Someone whole.”
― Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

“I squat there and think about how you get trained early on as a woman to perceive how others are perceiving you, at the great expense of what you yourself are feeling about them. Sometimes you mix the two up in a terrible tangle that’s hard to unravel.”
― Lily King, Writers & Lovers

“It’s a particular kind of pleasure, of intimacy, loving a book with someone.”
― Lily King, Writers & Lovers

“I don’t write because I think I have something to say. I write because if I don’t, everything feels even worse.”
― Lily King, Writers & Lovers

“I love these geese. They make my chest tight and full and help me believe that things will be all right again, that I will pass through this time as I have passed through other times, that the vast and threatening blank ahead of me is a mere specter, that life is lighter and more playful than I’m giving it credit for. But right on the heels of that feeling, that suspicion that all is not yet lost, comes the urge to tell my mother, tell her that I am okay today, that I have felt something close to happiness, that I might still be capable of feeling happy. She will want to know that. But I can't tell her. That's the wall I always slam into on a good morning like this. My mother will be worrying about me, and I can't tell her that I'm okay.

The geese don't care that I'm crying again. They're used to it.”
― Lily King, Writers & Lovers