Top 150 Ann Liang Quotes (2026 Update)
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101. “This is Julius Gong, after all. My Julius. The boy who’d run all my races for me, who’s memorized everything I’ve ever said, who’s carrying a bag full of my books, and who’s studying my face closely right now.”

— Ann Liang

102. “So beautiful and infuriating and confusing. So ready to split me open with a single word, stitch me up again with a fleeting touch.”

— Ann Liang

103. “Please, Sadie. I’m begging.”

— Ann Liang

104. “How many women throughout history were blamed for the weaknesses of men? We made such convenient scapegoats. We were raised to be small, to be silent, to take whatever we were given and no more.”

— Ann Liang

105. “You stare at your own face long enough and you’ll inevitably find something to hate about it.”

— Ann Liang

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

— Ann Liang

107. “I can’t always say pretty things, and sometimes I tease you when really I just want you to look my way, and –.”

— Ann Liang

108. “The sun is bursting through my chest, breaking past my lips. It’s my life, I think with amazement, and it’s beautiful, and I can paint it any color I want to. Right now it’s drenched in the brighest shade of gold. I have the brush in my hands, and the canvas is mine. It’s all mine.”

— Ann Liang

109. “You’re so driven. So determined. No matter what happens, you just have a plan and you do it- and you do it well too.”

— Ann Liang

110. “Caz cups my face with one steady, slender hand and traces a gentle line down my cheek, and my mind – my mind teeters toward oblivion. My breathing betrays me. His ink-black eyes lock on mine, and I am staring up at him, half in shock and maybe awe. He’s unreasonably beautiful and he’s so close it makes me ache and I want him closer still. I want him even though I shouldn’t. I want him to want me too.”

— Ann Liang

111. “I think you’re obsessed with me, Sadie Wen.”

— Ann Liang

112. “I guess that’s the thing: I’ve spent my whole life longing to be seen, but I’ve also come to realize that when people look too closely, they inevitably notice the ugly parts too, like how the tiny cracks on a polished vase only become visible under scrutiny.”

— Ann Liang

113. “Fanli. Flesh of my heart, light of my sun. He was here, in the enemy kingdom.”

— Ann Liang

114. “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

115. “It’s a challenge. This is what we do, I realize. We talk in circles. We give each other riddles, confounding clues, half answers. Everything and anything but the truth.”

— Ann Liang

116. “They’ve bet everything on me- their time and energy and savings- and this is what I have to show for it. Sunk costs. A failed investment.”

— Ann Liang

117. “I always feel better when I look better.”

— Ann Liang

118. “Because when he is ahead of her, if just by one question, one mark, one inch, that is the only time he can be confident she’s watching nobody but him. That is the only way he can think of to hold her attention, to make her care, to keep her interested.”

— Ann Liang

119. “Sometimes I forget that in the bigger scheme of things, it’s okay to not be the best at everything. To be surrounded by people who can solve problems you can’t, who are talented in different ways, who will go on to change the world.”

— Ann Liang

120. “He’s leaving with Sadie Wen: his co-conspirator, his co-captain, his rival, his life’s great defining question and answer.”

— Ann Liang

121. “Every move I made premeditated, but still always miscalculating, offering up the wrong comment or opinion or idea. Days when I was too exhausted to sleep while someone else lived the life I dreamed of.”

— Ann Liang

122. “Sorry.” Sarah’s voice sounds smaller, muffled, like she’s holding the phone between her ear and shoulder. I think I hear the clatter of wood and a very quietly uttered expletive. “A – a painting of Jesus just fell to the ground for some reason. Weird.” If I were even kind of religious, I’d definitely see this as a bad omen.”

— Ann Liang

123. “Fix this. It’s what I’ve always done, or tried to do. Fix the gap in my family, the holes in my life, patch everything up, smooth everything over.”

— Ann Liang

124. “It’s one of the many reasons I love being around Abigail. We can talk on the phone for five hours straight in the evenings, stopping only to grab our phone chargers or a glass of water, but we can also just sit together and watch the changing scenery through the window.”

— Ann Liang

125. “Everything is temporary, Yan Yan. And all the more reason to seize whatever’s in front of you while it’s still there.”

— Ann Liang

126. “Sometimes I worry I’d bore you if I told you every single time I found you beautiful. But you are. Just so you know.”

— Ann Liang

127. “I’ve never known how to witness dusk without feeling a dull sense of grief: another day gone, another day lost where I’m still the same.”

— Ann Liang

128. “In a world where everyone will demand something from you, it requires a certain degree of selfishness to be happy, you know.”

— Ann Liang

129. “Why not? It’s very easy to fall in love with you, Leah. The easiest thing in the world.”

— Ann Liang

130. “I am not Jessica Chen. And maybe Jessica Chen herself isn’t either. Maybe nobody is. The very idea of her is a construct, a myth, a distraction, the dream we’re forever reaching toward but can never equite grasp.”

— Ann Liang

131. “Please,” he said. “There cannot be nobody else but you.”

— Ann Liang

132. “Your entire existence is basically a run-on sentence.”

— Ann Liang

133. “We could grab dinner first... Maybe walk around a bit –.”

— Ann Liang

134. “Because you challenge me, you distract me when my brain is being cruel, you sharpen my edges when the world tries to wear them down.”

— Ann Liang

135. “The men will fight for their thrones and their power and their legacies, but to them we are nothing more than crickets and ants, insignificant, expendable. We will continue to worry over the rice and soy sauce and oil, three meals a day, how to escape the cold in the winter and the heat in the high summer, the holes in the roof and the bedding and the taxes. What does it matter who wears the crown, if they will not change any of this for us?”

— Ann Liang

136. “What I’m realizing is that if you’re quiet about the things that hurt you, people are only going to mistake your tolerance for permission.”

— Ann Liang

137. “Success is only meant to be rented out, borrowed in small doses at a time, never to be owned completely, no matter what price you’re willing to pay.”

— Ann Liang

138. “His mouth is on mine in an instant, desperate, urgent. And I cave in. I hate surrendering, but maybe it’s different when you’re both surrendering to the same thing.”

— Ann Liang

139. “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

140. “At what point, I wonder, staring at the front door as it swings shut one last time, does something become unfixable? At what point is a tapestry riddled with so many holes and loose threads that it’s impossible to patch it up again? That it deserves to be thrown away instead?”

— Ann Liang

141. “And I’m certain in this very moment that if I had to walk deep into the woods, into a burning house, down into the depths of hell itself, he would still accompany me, just to make sure I don’t leave his sight.”

— Ann Liang

142. “Whatever works,′ I say sweetly, relishing the flash of genuine surprise on his face before I wrap one hand around the nape of his neck and pull him forward.”

— Ann Liang

143. “I finish underlining the date with my ruler so it’s perfectly straight. This is like my version of drugs.”

— Ann Liang

144. “How ironic it was, that when we were apart, all i wished for was to be with him. Yet as soon as we were reunited, all we did was tell each other to leave.”

— Ann Liang

145. “The only thing I ask is that we don’t ever become strangers, because I really – ” He breaks off. Clenches his jaw, fighting against some ineffable emotion. “I don’t think I could bear it, Leah. I don’t think my heart would be able to survive it.”

— Ann Liang

146. “I have never known anybody as completely as I know you, and yet I still want to sit next to you, draw close to you, closer. I want you to tell me every story, want to listen to you speak until the night sinks in the sky and the stars fade out. I want you to hold me like a grudge, keep me like a promise, haunt me like a ghost.”

— Ann Liang

147. “When joy arrives, it catches me off guard. It sneaks up slowly through my rib cage like poppies pushing through soil after the rain, and then it’s there, everywhere, warmth beating in my chest, spreading down to my fingertips as I sink back in the sunlight.”

— Ann Liang

148. “I hate you,” she grumbles without conviction, her voice soft enough to be a sigh. He tugs her closer still, taking his time to take her in, his smile widening slowly. “I know you don’t,” he says. And she doesn’t disagree.”

— Ann Liang

149. “You were right, Sadie Wen. I am completely, helplessly obsessed with you.”

— Ann Liang

150. “Rejection is the most humiliating form of defeat. It’s a losing battle before it even begun.”

— Ann Liang