Top 50 Ann Liang Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Once is an accident. Twice is a coincidence. Thrice is a pattern.”

— Ann Liang

2. “Descartes was wrong, you know, when he said, ‘To live well, you must live unseen.’ To live well, you must learn to see yourself first. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

— Ann Liang

3. “I’d rather be the villain who lives to the end than the hero who winds up dead.”

— Ann Liang

4. “I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”

— Ann Liang

5. “Is it really too much to ask? For people like me to want a bit of that light for ourselves?”

— Ann Liang

6. “I didn’t know you had such a praise kink.”

— Ann Liang

7. “Yes, is the obvious answer. I do hate you. I hate everything about you. I hate you so much that whenever I’m around you, I can barely think straight. I can barely even breathe.”

— Ann Liang

8. “If I’m not swimming as hard as I can, feet thrashing at the waves, I’m drowning.”

— Ann Liang

9. “And this, I think, is my ultimate fatal flaw. Missing people who don’t miss me back. Clinging on to strands of string that shouldn’t mean half as much as they do. It takes so little for me to love someone, yet so long for me to move on.”

— Ann Liang

10. “It almost gives me whiplash, how quickly the mood changes, like having your emotional, family-friendly farm animal movie interrupted by a cheery ad from McDonald’s.”

— Ann Liang

11. “The neglected ones, the unlucky ones, the ones who want more than they’ve been give. The ones who have to crawl and scrape and fight their way up from the very bottom, who have to game a system designed for them to lose. Always the first to be punished and blamed when things go wrong. Always the last to e seen, to be saved.”

— Ann Liang

12. “I guess my point is that I do believe in love. Really. I’m just not convinced that kind of love could ever happen to me.”

— Ann Liang

13. “There’s something strangely intimate about calling someone in the dark. It’s like listening to your favorite song in the middle of a crowded subway; the world narrows down to just you and this voice in your ear, while everyone else around you goes about their lives, completely oblivious. It feels sacred. Like a secret.”

— Ann Liang

14. “Thankfully, just as I’m contemplating moving to the Gobi Desert or someplace farther.”

— Ann Liang

15. “You think that just because you’re all smart and wealthy and attractive you can just do whatever the hell you want – ” “Wait.” Something shifts in the black depths of his eyes. “You think I’m attractive?”

— Ann Liang

16. “When you care about someone, you want to be inconvenienced – you wouldn’t mind being inconvenienced by them every day for the rest of your life. That’s what love is. That’s all love really is.”

— Ann Liang

17. “It’s nothing like the way they describe it in the movies, like all the stars aligning and fireworks exploding across an ink-black sky. It feels both quieter and bigger than that, as simple as coming home and as dizzying and all-encompassing as the wind rushing in around us. It feels like a thousand banished and buried moments have been building up to this – to us alone and untethered and weak with wanting – and maybe they have.”

— Ann Liang

18. “I hope you remember to miss me when all this is over.”

— Ann Liang

19. “I once heard this theory that when you dread something, time moves faster, as if the universe is determined to conspire against you.”

— Ann Liang

20. “You’ll become the head of the number one tech start-up in all of China, and I’ll be a renowned, award-winning journalist or English professor. Together, we’ll – ” “Be the nation’s greatest power couple?” he offers. “I was going to say conquer the world,” I admit. “But sure. I guess we can start small.”

— Ann Liang

21. “Maybe you can talk about how... I don’t know, how his laughter sounds. If it’s rougher in the mornings, or lower on the phone, or how he always tips his head back when he finds something funny. How – how you can only see his dimples when he smiles at something real. How you’re jealous of everyone who loves him, who knew him before you did.”

— Ann Liang

22. “And while it’s important to know how to fight your way to the top... It’s always nice when there are others to help lift us up, don’t you think?”

— Ann Liang

23. “I sneak a peek at his Spotify playlist, half certain it’ll be all just white noise or classic orchestral music, only to find Taylor Swift’s latest album playing instead.”

— Ann Liang

24. “You hold everything in here, Ai-Ai,” she says sternly, pointing to her own heart. “For better or worse. But not everyone is going to guess at what you’re thinking like I do. No one is going to know how you feel if you don’t tell them. And until you do – you can never really know what’s going to happen.”

— Ann Liang

25. “He only seems to relax when I scoot forward, bring my hand lower down to his arm, and tell him what I’ve wanted someone to say to me for as long as I can remember. What I’m still waiting for someone to say. “I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”

— Ann Liang

26. “Romantic breakups are romanticized constantly, talked about everywhere by everyone, but platonic breakups are swept to the side, suffered in secret, as if they’re somehow less important.”

— Ann Liang

27. “He lets go of my wrist, dragging a hand through his hair instead. “Good god,” he says with a little laugh. Shakes his head. “For one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met, you can really be quite oblivious sometimes.”

— Ann Liang

28. “They-Could-Step-on-Me-and-I’d-Thank-Them.”

— Ann Liang

29. “But certain joys, I’m discovering, are worth the potential pain.”

— Ann Liang

30. “It’s a rare talent, the kind you can’t acquire through sheer determination and hard work” -Alice.”

— Ann Liang

31. “But that’s the problem. If this goes on, I might just die of guilt. But if this ends, I already have too much to grieve. Somehow, despite all my rules and reservations, I’m already in too deep, so far lost in the waves that sinking feels easier than swimming.”

— Ann Liang

32. “This, I suppose, is one of those unexpected side effects of kissing that no one ever warned me about: after you kiss someone once, the possibilities of kissing them again are endless.”

— Ann Liang

33. “You’re still a kid, you know.”

— Ann Liang

34. “And I don’t know how to make people stay; I never have.”

— Ann Liang

35. “I want this to be real.”

— Ann Liang

36. “There’s something almost therapeutic about the simple, repetitive motions, working alone in the peace of my room at night, smoothing out the thin squares of paper again and again under my palms, my Spotify playlist on loop in the background, the playlist Zoe and I made together before I left, with all our favorite artists: Taylor Swift and Jay Chou and BTS.”

— Ann Liang

37. “And then – good god – he outruns me. Or, well, outwalks, which is without a doubt much worse.”

— Ann Liang

38. “Because even though I’ve found Caz Song attractive on a physical level for a while now, my biggest turn-on has always been competence. And as it appears, Caz is unbelievably competent at his job.”

— Ann Liang

39. “And everything about this moment is so lovely and so fragile in its loveliness that I’m almost afraid to hold it. Afraid that the spell will break.”

— Ann Liang

40. “It makes me almost dizzy, thinking about the stark differences in realities, what will be and what could’ve been.”

— Ann Liang

41. “If awkwardness could be a fatal flaw, it would most definitely be mine.”

— Ann Liang

42. “Planning things out in detail means there are boundaries, and boundaries mean I’ll at least have control over something.”

— Ann Liang

43. “Step Three: Observe Him More Closely. The apparent logic behind this is that crushes are like mirages; they don’t hold well under intense scrutiny.”

— Ann Liang

44. “But aren’t small things exactly what friendships are made up of? Frayed string bracelets and late-night texts and compilations of your favorite songs? When you take those things away, what do you have left?”

— Ann Liang

45. “What your mama always say? If you not good person, you’re nothing. Nothing.”

— Ann Liang

46. “Talent isn’t the same as genius” -Henry.”

— Ann Liang

47. “You’re so weird sometimes,” he says, and it somehow sounds more affectionate than I love you.”

— Ann Liang

48. “Writing is simply a form of lying; I’ve always known this to be true. But to tell a good lie, a convincing lie, one that is both logically constructed and consistent and emotionally resonant – that takes time and effort. Attention to detail. And in this particular case, it also takes cooperation.”

— Ann Liang

49. “He’d flirt with a teaspoon if the situation called for.”

— Ann Liang

50. “Why? Was it – was it bad?” The words tumble out of my lips before I can stop them, like water gushing from a broken dam. I hate that this is always my first instinct: self-doubt, anxiety, the nagging feeling that I did something wrong.”

— Ann Liang