30 Powerful Quotes From “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo”

Did you fall in love with Evelyn Hugo? This collection of “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo” quotes are sure to remind you why you loved the book so much.

If you’re like me, after you read a good book, you experience a sort of “book hangover” that takes a bit to get over. That’s how I feel about Taylor Jenkins Reid’s “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.” If I’m being honest, so many people raved about this book that I kept putting it off. A red flag for me in reading sometimes is that if a ton of people like a book, I might not. 

But this is where TJR proves me wrong, because I gobbled up this book and never, ever wanted it to end. In fact, I saved the last 30 pages for a slow Saturday morning so that I could savor them slowly with coffee. It’s just that good! If you have read this one, you know. In any case, throughout the book, there were numerous times I found myself marking a page, because a quote struck me. 

Instead of filing my book directly on the bookshelf, I decided to take all those folded pages and share some of my favorite quotes from “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo” which is about to be a Netflix production. Warning: While I don’t go into the plot at all, some of the below quotes may include spoilers if you haven’t finished the book yet 🙂 

30 Powerful Quotes From “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo”

“The world respects people who think they should be running it.”

“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.”

“Make them pay you what they would pay a white man.”

“You can be sorry about something and not regret it.”

“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.”

“You have to find a job that makes your heart feel big instead of one that makes it feel small.”

“You do not know how fast you have been running, how hard you have been working, how truly exhausted you are, until somewhat stands behind you and says, ‘It’s OK, you can fall down now. I’ll catch you.'”

“I simply didn’t care. It cost so much, caring. I didn’t have any currency to spend on it.”

“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.”

“I’m cynical and I’m bossy, and most people would consider me vaguely immoral.”

“Don’t ignore half of me so you can fit me into a box. Don’t do that.”

“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.”

“Be wary of men with something to prove.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Sometimes divorce isn’t an earth-shattering loss. Sometimes it’s just two people waking up out of a fog.”

“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.”

“I simply didn’t care. It cost so much, caring. I didn’t have any currency to spend on it.”

“I’ve never thought of myself as a force to be reckoned with. Maybe I should start thinking of myself that way; maybe I deserve to.”

“Why have I spent so long settling for less when I know damn well the world expects more?”

“People think that intimacy is about sex. But intimacy is about truth. When you realize you can tell someone your truth, when you can show yourself to them, when you stand in front of them bare and their response is ‘you’re safe with me’- that’s intimacy.”

“Never let anyone make you feel ordinary.”

“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.”

“Heartbreak is a loss. Divorce is a piece of paper.”

“It’s a hard business, reconciling what the truth used to be with what the truth is now.”

“No one is just a victim or a victor. Everyone is somewhere in between. People who go around casting themselves as one or the other are not only kidding themselves, but they’re also painfully unoriginal.”

“People are messy, and love can be ugly. I’m inclined to always err on the side of compassion.”

“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.”

“I think being yourself—your true, entire self—is always going to feel like you’re swimming upstream.”

“Praise is just like an addiction. The more you get it, the more of it you need just to stay even.”

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