Top 200 Ann Napolitano Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “Why is it,” an old news anchor growls, “that out of all the terrible news in this terrible world, we care so much about this one downed plane and this one little boy?”

— Ann Napolitano

52. “It was the reason neither Florida nor any of her friends could afford health insurance – the industry had nothing to do with providing healthcare; it was designed to extract the maximum amount of money from each person.”

— Ann Napolitano

53. “He says, “A family that big must have been a lot of work.” “It was. You’re a man, so you’ll never know work that hard. It’s reserved solely for the women.”

— Ann Napolitano

54. “I wish you magic, Edward.”

— Ann Napolitano

55. “He wonders if the scientists who tend to the Large Hadron Collider are hoping to discover not only what happens in the air between two people but how that pressurized air changes those people inside their skin. He hears the science teacher say, The air between us is not empty space.”

— Ann Napolitano

56. “We’re part of the sky, and the rocks in your mother’s garden, and that old man who sleeps by the train station. We’re all interconnected, and when you see that, you see how beautiful life is. Your mother and sisters don’t have that awareness. Not yet, anyway. They believe they’re contained in their bodies, in the biographical facts of their lives.”

— Ann Napolitano

57. “Stop thinking about who you were when you were living the wrong life, William. You’re built for the life you’re living now.”

— Ann Napolitano

58. “They were dismantling their habits and routines, and it was like pulling up floorboards and finding joy underneath.”

— Ann Napolitano

59. “He was her heart. He had changed all the molecules inside her. Sylvie had known love would come for her with the force of a tsunami. She’d dreamed of this.”

— Ann Napolitano

60. “The idea of love in those books – Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Anna Karenina – is that it’s a force that obliterates you. They’re all tragedies, Sylvie.”

— Ann Napolitano

61. “Basketball was the first thing in William’s life that loved him back.”

— Ann Napolitano

62. “She realized that she was most certainly a mammal and had the ability to shake the world apart and create a human when she unleased her power. She was a mother. This identify shuddered through her, welcome like water to a dry riverbed. It felt so elemental and true that Julia must have unknowingly been a mother all along, simply waiting to be joined by her child.”

— Ann Napolitano

63. “When your love for a person is so profound that it’s part of who you are, then the absence of the person becomes part of your DNA, your bones, and your skin.”

— Ann Napolitano

64. “The thing was – ” He stopped, looking for the right language. “Yes?” the doctor said. “Alice is a lamp. A bright lamp, from the moment she was born. She kind of shines. Looking at her hurt my eyes, and I was afraid to touch her.” “You were afraid of her light?” “No. I was afraid I was going to put her light out. That my darkness would swamp her light.” “So you felt like you had to stay away from her, to keep her safe.” “I have to stay away from her, yes.”

— Ann Napolitano

65. “She’s that magic, shimmering age – he guesses 27 – when a woman has one foot in youth and one in adulthood.”

— Ann Napolitano

66. “She was all of herself with him and even felt there was room for her to become more. When he rested his eyes on her, it was without judgment or expectation, and in that space, Sylvie felt her potential: for bravery, brilliance, kindness, joy. All of these sails rested on the deck of her ship; they were hers, but she hadn’t seen them before.”

— Ann Napolitano

67. “She would wait, forever if necessary, for a man who saw the expanse of her, the way her father had.”

— Ann Napolitano

68. “In the moonlight, though, the pain is revealed to be love. The emotions are entwined; they are the two sides of the same gleaming coin.”

— Ann Napolitano

69. “She existed outside her own body-she was scattered across this ground-but somehow this made her feel less vulnerable. She was painted into this family, mirrored in her father’s face. She was more abundant than she’d believed possible.”

— Ann Napolitano

70. “You’re depressed, not crazy. It’s not insane to be depressed in this world. It’s more sane than being happy.”

— Ann Napolitano

71. “Kent’s affection for William was too clear and too uncomplicated. It shone on William like the sun. No one had ever loved him unconditionally like this, and that love, when he was the most undeserving he’d ever been in his life, made William feel like he was burning up.”

— Ann Napolitano

72. “Sylvie had always thought that when, if, she wrote, it would have to be perfect. A beautifully crafted novel, ready to hand to the world. But William had shown her she could write for, and to, herself. And Whitman had rewritten, expanded, cut, and reimagined his poems across his life. He’d created not one beautiful book but different attempts at excellence and beauty as he aged and loved and reconsidered everything.”

— Ann Napolitano

73. “You know what Daddy would say when he saw Sylvie,” Julia said in a quiet voice. Emeline and Izzy nodded, and Cecelia said, “Hello beautiful.”

— Ann Napolitano

74. “Intense psychological stress tends to shut down the part of the brain responsible for innovative, creative thought.”

— Ann Napolitano

75. “Julia had accepted a job far away from her sisters and home. That collection of weeks had pulled her life out from under her like a rug. Julia had devoted herself to not losing control of her circumstances like that ever again, and she hadn’t, until recently.”

— Ann Napolitano

76. “She fits her hand over his and presses. Her skin is soft, and the pressure makes his mouth form a smile. He can be furious with her and still be aware that he loves her at the same time. It took years for him to be able to accept the absence of logic in their love. Frustration plus a bad mood plus a particular smile of hers equaled a shot of joy in his belly.”

— Ann Napolitano

77. “Make sure you live a meaningful life.”

— Ann Napolitano

78. “The onset of grief bore no resemblance to his experience with depression. Depression meant disconnection, shutting down, a dangerous quiet. Now William’s feelings whipped around inside him like a flailing water hose.”

— Ann Napolitano

79. “But perhaps what felt impossible was leaving that person behind. When your love for a person is so profound that it’s part of who you are, then the absence of the person becomes part of your DNA, your bones, and your skin. Charlie’s and.”

— Ann Napolitano

80. “He was vast, and beautiful, and more present in the gift of baby formula to a young mother than in any.”

— Ann Napolitano

81. “My camp counselor won’t even let me read during lunch. She says it’s because reading is antisocial, but I think it’s because she’s actually Joseph Goebbels.” “Who’s that?” “Nazi. Burned books.”

— Ann Napolitano

82. “It felt like a piece of punctuation in a run-on sentence.”

— Ann Napolitano

83. “The dream was now in the air at risk of the elements beyond her grasp.”

— Ann Napolitano

84. “You and your sisters have so many reference points, such a dense history,” William said. “I never get used to it.”

— Ann Napolitano

85. “Stop thinking about who you were when you were living the wrong life, William. You’re built for the life you’re living now. You have a gift for seeing what’s wrong with these boys. And besides, you can’t fail when you’re doing what you love.”

— Ann Napolitano

86. “She was Julia’s wild hair, she was the lake her husband had once been carried out of, and no matter what happened next, she was love.”

— Ann Napolitano

87. “It’s hard to explain, but our love was so deep and wide that it made me love everyone and everything in sight. Which included me.” She smiled wider. “I know it sounds silly, but I’m proud of myself. I guess for living a brave life.” William nodded, unable to speak for a second.”

— Ann Napolitano

88. “When he woke up in the hospital, dry, and saw Sylvie on a chair next to him, his first thought was that he’d failed. The fact that he had failed meant he had to continue to walk forward with his life history – his mistakes – slung over his shoulders like a heavy backpack. This fact exhausted him, but he was too tired to reject it.”

— Ann Napolitano

89. “Since the diagnosis, Sylvie had returned to Leaves of Grass. She wanted to absorb Whitman’s optimistic take on death; she wanted to share the poet’s open mind about what came next. Whenever Sylvie felt a quiver of fear, she repeated to herself the line: And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.”

— Ann Napolitano

90. “He’d convinced himself something between them was broken, when in truth the broken thing was him. Edward’s cheeks grow hot. He, alone, had almost destroyed the most important part of his life.”

— Ann Napolitano

91. “He closes his eyes for a second, and Edward sees the lines of pain on Gary’s face; they’re the same lines – carved by loss – that engrave Edward’s whole self, and the boy shudders in recognition.”

— Ann Napolitano

92. “Sylvie reached out for the notebook. Like him, she’d grown up going to confession in church. Entering the dark booth and lowering herself to the kneeler. Confessing her sins to the screen that separated her from the priest. William thought of that sacrament now and felt bad for all the children who were forced to divide their ordinary lives into sins and not-sins so they would have something to say to a cassocked stranger.”

— Ann Napolitano

93. “Sylvie and her sisters had known themselves under their father’s gaze. And with that gaze gone, the threads that had tied their family so tightly together had loosened. What had been effortless would now take effort. What had been home for all of them was now merely Rose’s house.”

— Ann Napolitano

94. “The child inside Julia lay wide-eyed in the dark, knowing that she was Jo, but only because Sylvie was Beth.”

— Ann Napolitano

95. “Has any one supposed it lucky to be born? I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it. I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash’d babe, and am not contain’d between my hat and boots, And peruse manifold objects, no two alike and every one good, The earth good and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good. – Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” Verse 7.”

— Ann Napolitano

96. “He offered this stranger what looked like everything: his joy, his love, his brain, his complete attention. He gave that girl a face that Bruce, who has studied his son every single day of his life, had never seen. Never even knew existed.”

— Ann Napolitano

97. “I didn’t expect” – she paused – “for it to be part of everything, every minute. I didn’t know that you could lose someone, and that meant you lost so much else.”

— Ann Napolitano

98. “Boom chicka boom. Benjamin can hear her soundtrack so clearly she might as well be carrying a speaker on each hip. In his neighborhood, she’d have a line of men following her down the street, dancing to that beat.”

— Ann Napolitano

99. “I want to know what to do,” he hears himself say, and, like the decision to write to the co-pilot’s wife, the statement is a relief. He wants to know what to do. She taps the center of his hand. “That’s easy. The same thing we all must do. Take stock of who we are, and what we have, and then use it for good.”

— Ann Napolitano

100. “His body was now more or less irrelevant. Arash studied him. “I heard you’re.”

— Ann Napolitano