Top 70 Alison Espach Quotes (2026 Update)

1. “Inside my house, nobody was home, except everybody, but it was easy to feel like those were one and the same.”

— Alison Espach

2. “Being an adult, it seemed, was horrible. But being a child was awful too, and moving from one state to the other only meant you were moving closer to death, with so much and so little to talk about all at the same time, and how was that even possible?”

— Alison Espach

3. “Adults were constantly auditioning, but for what?”

— Alison Espach

4. “And yet, every day, it seemed, I was discovering new ways to feel fourteen again. Everyday, there were new ways to be disappointed by the conversation, by the weather.”

— Alison Espach

5. “I like knowing that my problems exist within a large and respected tradition of problems. That ever since the beginning of civilization, humans have been very upset.”

— Alison Espach

6. “When nothing bad happened, nobody even noticed. When nothing bad happened, it was just an ordinary day. Sometimes, when Dad was yelling his loudest at me, this was what he seemed to be saying: Do you people know how many ordinary days I’ve provided for you?”

— Alison Espach

7. “I knew enough by then to know that it was unfair to use a woman’s past self against her.”

— Alison Espach

8. “Bridesmaids need the same kinds of stories soldiers do, stories that justify why they do what they do. Why they are willing to sacrifice who they are and a good night’s sleep for the noble cause of defending democracy and Lila and Gary’s love.”

— Alison Espach

9. “Teachers didn’t like it when you didn’t participate, even when you were a spelling bee champion who got 100s on all the exams. Silence made them uncomfortable. Silence was like a big watery void that reflected back whatever they feared the most.”

— Alison Espach

10. “She doesn’t see the point in staying alive only to do all the same things that made her want to die.”

— Alison Espach

11. “These stories were like little bibles to her, teaching her how to be normal, how to dream, how to believe that happiness and a new family would arrive in a single moment, on a single page, like the sudden crescendo of a symphony.”

— Alison Espach

12. “But what a shame. Because now I see that I was too young and beautiful then not to be naked all of the time.” When Patricia realized that’s exactly how she would feel when she was ninety – that she was too young and beautiful at sixty not to have been naked all of the time – she reached out to the artist. “It had been decades,” Patricia says.”

— Alison Espach

13. “For too long, she had felt stuck in the depths of her house, in the void of her depression, where she was not actually real. Where nothing was real. As if she had slipped out of the known world without anybody noticing, except for Harry, who would follow her around all day, up the stairs, down the stairs, into the bathroom where he would sit with his serious face and watch.”

— Alison Espach

14. “But she liked the thought of becoming a woman who casually did yoga by the sea.”

— Alison Espach

15. “We laughed a lot, but I don’t remember about what. I just remember laughing. And wasn’t that the most important thing? Wasn’t that all a person wanted to remember?”

— Alison Espach

16. “This is the gift random strangers can give you, Phoebe is realizing – the freedom to say or be anything around them. Because who cares? He doesn’t know her, will never know her.”

— Alison Espach

17. “Lila admits she does not do the best job of keeping in touch with her friends when they are no longer right in front of her face.”

— Alison Espach

18. “Does she regret planning such a big wedding? Does she feel proud of her choices? Does she feel trapped in the spectacle of her own making? And how did weddings get like this? How did they get so big, come to be so important, that a woman couldn’t see her way out of it? That a woman would sacrifice her entire life for it?”

— Alison Espach

19. “She wonders how terrifying it felt, not to know any of this about herself, to sit out on this big lawn, looking at the sea, feeling like she was at the very end of it all. She wonders what it was that made her realize there was somewhere else to go.”

— Alison Espach

20. “And maybe that’s it: You do things in the moment for the person you hope you might be two years from now.”

— Alison Espach

21. “Lila, every day this week, you gave me a reason to get up in the morning, to put on a beautiful dress and be part of something, and for that I will always be grateful.”

— Alison Espach

22. “There are some people in this world who remind you of exactly how you like to speak.”

— Alison Espach

23. “He was always worried about protecting Phoebe from herself. Like when Phoebe was pregnant, Matt looked at the two lines on the stick and said, ‘It’s too early to get excited, isn’t it?’ and she agreed, but when she started bleeding ten weeks later, she hated herself for agreeing, for not getting excited when she had the chance.”

— Alison Espach

24. “But she shouldn’t think of Lila either. She shouldn’t think at all. Bob was right – she thinks too much. She thinks and thinks and thinks until she gets so tired of thinking, she never properly finishes whatever she started.”

— Alison Espach

25. “Maybe this is the part of her life when she gets to start saying what she means, for better or worse. Because no amount of truth can be worse than the feeling she got after years of hiding from it.”

— Alison Espach

26. “Seems more plausible that Hell is some revenge fantasy concocted by unhappy people so they could punish all the happy people in their minds.”

— Alison Espach

27. “Love was an invisible wire, connecting them always.”

— Alison Espach

28. “Phoebe believes a loving mother gives a person a kind of confidence to exist that Phoebe never quite had.”

— Alison Espach

29. “She has always been so afraid to know things about herself – so afraid of reading the truth in course evaluations, or seeing her large nose in a photograph, or listening to her therapist draw unbearably accurate conclusion about her.”

— Alison Espach

30. “Phoebe didn’t think she’d end up being a woman like this. But if the last few years have taught her anything, it’s that you really can’t ever know who you are going to become.”

— Alison Espach

31. “It’s not pathetic to want things, Phoebe.”

— Alison Espach

32. “Some people don’t ask for what they need. Some people are like religious children that way, mistaking suffering with goodness.”

— Alison Espach

33. “His intelligence was one of the reasons that she fell in love with him. But it was annoying to see young women worship it, because nobody worshipped hers. People were either surprised by it or disapproving of it.”

— Alison Espach

34. “She gives up trying to feel like she’s in a painting. She doesn’t have to be beautiful in this moment. She doesn’t have to be anything, ever. Her husband is not watching. Her father is not watching. Nobody was ever really watching, except Phoebe. Phoebe was the only person waiting in the dark to condemn herself for every single thing when the day was over.”

— Alison Espach

35. “So don’t even bother telling me you have plans, because I know you were planning on being dead right now.”

— Alison Espach

36. “And maybe that’s it: You do things in the moment for the person you hope you might be two years from now. You don’t kill yourself when you are sad because one day you might not be sad, and you might want to go surfing with a man you really like?”

— Alison Espach

37. “These are big questions, Phoebe thinks, and good writing is always driven by a big question.”

— Alison Espach

38. “The bigger the gesture, the emptier the feeling. The more wedding you need, the less happy you must be.”

— Alison Espach

39. “No. She will not think of her father or her husband. She has spent too much of her life thinking of them.”

— Alison Espach

40. “You honestly expect me to believe that people go on vacations without making a spreadsheet of fun first?”

— Alison Espach

41. “Lila has no maid of honor and Phoebe has never been a maid of honor. It has always been a mark of shame for her, that no woman in this world was willing to claim her.”

— Alison Espach

42. “To be stuck inside her house was to be stuck inside herself and all the choices she made over the years.”

— Alison Espach

43. “But do you ever notice how large your forehead is? Or how you’re always putting your hair behind your ears?” “Isn’t that what people with hair do?” “No,” Tiff says, horrified. “You do that because you don’t have a side bang.” “Do I need a side bang?” “In my professional opinion, yes.” “Then give me a side bang,” Phoebe says. Maybe this is all she needed the whole time. Maybe this is the finishing touch of the grand makeover. Why didn’t she think of it earlier? A side bang!”

— Alison Espach

44. “It was death, I knew, waiting in the most unexpected places – inside Mom’s laughter, at the end of Dad’s toes, in the bright green leaves outside our bedroom window that couldn’t have looked more alive.”

— Alison Espach

45. “She pictured herself on that canopy bed because she could only imagine herself happy in a place she had never been, a bed she had never slept in.”

— Alison Espach

46. “She takes another sip. She is happy she has lived long enough to learn the difference between decent champagne and really good champagne, which she now knows doesn’t just taste good on the first sip, but the entire way home.”

— Alison Espach

47. “Nobody was ever really watching, except Phoebe. Phoebe was the only person waiting in the dark to condemn herself for every single thing when the day was over.”

— Alison Espach

48. “I just don’t know why it’s so hard to be a person sometimes. It shouldn’t be this hard.”

— Alison Espach

49. “Successful men all over the world are always celebrates for their ability to eliminate something so they can make more room for something else.”

— Alison Espach

50. “But now she can understand what he was trying to tell her. It is good to want things, even the humiliating things. Even the things you aren’t supposed to want, like Gary, the groom. Because every time she thinks of sitting in that hot tub with Gary, she feels so lucky to be alive.”

— Alison Espach