Top 250 Ann Napolitano Quotes (2026 Update)
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101. “The child inside Julia lay wide-eyed in the dark, knowing that she was Jo, but only because Sylvie was Beth.”

— Ann Napolitano

102. “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

103. “I could be mad at you. I could scream at you. But I won’t. You raised me to take care of myself, and I will.”

— Ann Napolitano

104. “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

105. “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

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

— Ann Napolitano

107. “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

108. “The stories and the people in them did sound remarkable, Sylvie thought, when spoken aloud. She and the twins had rarely talked about what happened. They’d lived through it, after all, and the loss of Julia had made them quiet. But Josie’s wonder at the stories, and Izzy’s clear enjoyment of what she saw as a soap opera in which she played a small role, took the sting out of the grief woven through those times. When Sylvie spoke their family history into the air, all she heard was love.”

— Ann Napolitano

109. “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

110. “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

111. “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

112. “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

113. “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

114. “Each letter feels like a page in a book that he won’t fully understand until he reaches the end. It feels imperative – in a way nothing else in his life has – that he read every word. The attention he brings to the letters seems to be changing him; Edward can feel strands inside himself gathering, trying to find a shape in which he will be able to meet the eyes of the people in the photographs.”

— Ann Napolitano

115. “He’d always assumed openness was synonymous with danger and that if he wasn’t holding on tight to the new life he’d built, it would blow away. But with the barriers down, he’d discovered that life became bigger.”

— Ann Napolitano

116. “The past is the same as the present to her, as precious and as close at hand. After all, if you think about one memory for most of a day, is that not your present? Some people live in the now; some people prefer to reside in the past – either choice is valid.”

— Ann Napolitano

117. “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

118. “When she’s anxious, she replays moments from her life, perhaps to convince herself that she has a history.”

— Ann Napolitano

119. “Later that night, Sylvie sat in bed with a book open in her lap. She was too sleepy to read, but the proximity of the book was comforting. Telling.”

— Ann Napolitano

120. “He wanted to know where the ice was weakest beneath their feet so he could keep them from falling through.”

— Ann Napolitano

121. “She knew what mattered. She knew, at a deeper level each time, that what mattered was love. But love was what she had misread, mistaken, and misplaced in this life.”

— Ann Napolitano

122. “If you live long enough, everything is complicated.”

— Ann Napolitano

123. “When Sylvie was a child, she’d watched in amazement when friends, upset about a bad day at school or a slight from a boy they had a crush on, burst into tears at the sight of their mother. Their mother was their safe space, and so, with her, they felt every iota of their feelings.”

— Ann Napolitano

124. “Charlie had seen and loved each of them for who they were. When any of his girls – including Rose – had come into view, he’d always given them the same welcome, calling out, Hello beautiful! The greeting was nice enough to make them want to leave the room and come in all over again.”

— Ann Napolitano

125. “Julia had seen photos of Rose, pretty and tidy and smiling in this same garden, with Charlie at the beginning of their marriage, but her mother had eventually accepted and donned marital disappointment the same way she strapped on her ridiculous gardening outfit. All of her considerable efforts to propel her husband toward some kind of financial stability and success had died in their tracks. Now the house was Charlie’s space, and Rose’s refuge was the garden. The.”

— Ann Napolitano

126. “She was failing to provide significant comfort to her baby, and she was failing to be the mother that Jordan had always known. The three-year-old gazed at her nursing nightgown and uncombed hair with a combination of fear and sadness. She was also keenly aware that she was failing herself – she’d always believed that she could kick the butt of any situation, and this proved she couldn’t. She was not the woman she’d thought she was, nor the one she’d planned to be.”

— Ann Napolitano

127. “The passage of time, and the details that spun some moments into unforgettable memories and others into thin air, traveled with Sylvie – the swirling atmosphere of her own life – while she walked.”

— Ann Napolitano

128. “This act of generosity – Cecelia and Emeline had nothing to gain from him, personally – still struck him as extraordinary.”

— Ann Napolitano

129. “She carried a book at all times – to read, yes, but also as a handy shield for when she wanted to deflect the attention of other people. She would position a book in front of her face and think, or simply hide.”

— Ann Napolitano

130. “Julia loved living in this moment, with her life directly in front of her instead of off in the distance. She’d spent her entire childhood waiting to grow up so she could be here, ringing all the bells of adulthood.”

— Ann Napolitano

131. “Do you know our chicken schedule? Because we have a chicken schedule. We eat fried chicken on Mondays, roasted chicken on Wednesdays, and barbecued chicken breasts on Fridays. It never varies.”

— Ann Napolitano

132. “He hated that his friend had to resume the duty of standing guard over his depression.”

— Ann Napolitano

133. “William was slow-moving and unable to hold a conversation until he’d eaten a thousand calories and the color returned to his face.”

— Ann Napolitano

134. “Her sisters had always been her best friends; in Chicago, there had never been a need for anyone else in her life. She and Sylvie and the twins knew every version, every age, every mood of one another;.”

— Ann Napolitano

135. “I’m not anywhere I’m supposed to be, she thought. And I have no idea where I am.”

— Ann Napolitano

136. “The two boys lead the way down the hall. There are windows in this corridor, and the skyscrapers of New York City are visible in the distance – man-made mountains of steel and glass piercing a blue sky. Jane and Bruce can’t help but locate the spot where the Twin Towers used to be, the same way the tongue finds the hole where a tooth was pulled. Their sons, who were both toddlers when the towers fell, accept the skyline as it is.”

— Ann Napolitano

137. “Sylvie would love differently. She would celebrate whoever her beloved happened to be; she would be curious about his distinctiveness and sink into a love that was unblinkingly honest.”

— Ann Napolitano

138. “In the dream, William was swimming away from his mother and father, while they swam away from him. And he had told his wife and daughter to go away. So many people leaving each other. There had been a claustrophobic atmosphere in the dream, a foreboding, as if they were all about to find out they were swimming in a fishbowl. They were trying to get away from one another, and they were doomed to fail.”

— Ann Napolitano

139. “William felt the truth of this: He was lucky. Julia had already given him so much. All she seemed to want from him was his love and his enthusiasm for her plans. He could keep providing both of those things, easily, and he hoped that would be enough.”

— Ann Napolitano

140. “Then he bites an O in half and wills himself to remember nothing, think nothing, until all that exists is a flatness – a flatness he now identifies as himself.”

— Ann Napolitano

141. “She had screwed up, not him. It made her sad that her vast experience, even her marathon dances with men, hadn’t left her any the wiser.”

— Ann Napolitano

142. “I always thought that I wanted that dream because I was romantic and destined to live a big life, but that wasn’t true. I created that dream because real life scared me, and that dream seemed so far-fetched I didn’t think it would ever happen. I’d never seen that kind of love in person. My parents loved each other, but badly, and they were miserable.”

— Ann Napolitano

143. “He didn’t actually think of it as a book – that’s just what Julia called it. For William, it was something he worked on because there was a silence inside him that sometimes frightened him.”

— Ann Napolitano

144. “It was a three-block walk from the ice cream store back to the library, blocks that were so familiar to her that they operated as memories more than sidewalks, streets, and stores.”

— Ann Napolitano

145. “The sky, as if taking a breath, lightens.”

— Ann Napolitano

146. “He’s been sucker-punched by memories of his brother. This happens sometimes, and he knows he has to ride the memories out.”

— Ann Napolitano

147. “He noticed that in the sunlight her brown hair had honey-colored highlights. She looked lit up, from without and within.”

— Ann Napolitano

148. “Julia sought to collect labels like honors student, girlfriend, and wife, but Sylvie steered away from labels. She wanted to be true to herself with every word she uttered, every action she took, and every belief she held.”

— Ann Napolitano

149. “Sylvie had almost missed this life with this man, and because of this near-miss, she appreciated their moments together, even as they accumulated.”

— Ann Napolitano

150. “For Alice, part of the strangeness of this new Chicago family was that they conducted a kind of love that seemed voluminous; it required talking over one another and living on top of one another, and it was a force that appeared to include people both present and absent, alive and dead.”

— Ann Napolitano