Top 250 Ann Napolitano Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “You’re too young to really understand that life is short, but it is. I didn’t want to stop you when you were walking away from something that didn’t matter to do something that did. You and I are cut from the same cloth, baby girl. Neither of us would expect school or work to fill us up. We look out the window, or into ourselves, for something more.”

— Ann Napolitano

152. “William, that she had the capacity to raise these giant, beautiful sails and go.”

— Ann Napolitano

153. “No one in his life, except perhaps Kent, had ever accepted him just as he was, and Sylvie had accepted him when he was so broken he was barely a person.”

— Ann Napolitano

154. “How Leo Tolstoy had inspired Mahatma Gandhi, who had in turn inspired Martin Luther King, Jr. William.”

— Ann Napolitano

155. “When Julia was in middle school, a girl had accused her and her sisters of being a coven of witches. Julia hadn’t known what a coven was and had to look the word up. The definition had delighted her, and she’d hoped the girl was correct.”

— Ann Napolitano

156. “Julia wondered if all four girls’ voices lived inside their mother. Emeline’s earnestness, Julia’s clear directives, Cecelia’s excitement about the palette of colors that made up the world, Sylvie’s romantic yearning. Perhaps Rose simply masked her daughters’ voices with her own gruff tone, her own twist of anger and disappointment, but they were all there, buried within her.”

— Ann Napolitano

157. “And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.”

— Ann Napolitano

158. “He was learning the difference between calm and disconnected and was working to make his days more the former than the latter.”

— Ann Napolitano

159. “When I’m with you, I feel fixed.”

— Ann Napolitano

160. “When in doubt, read books,” Principal Arundhi says. He speaks quickly, as if worried this might be his last opportunity to share his thoughts. “Educate yourself. Education has always saved me, Edward. Learn about the mysteries.”

— Ann Napolitano

161. “She needed a backup to her mother, who.”

— Ann Napolitano

162. “My mom said she forgave her because she wanted to keep loving her.”

— Ann Napolitano

163. “William also used to worry about what he did and did not deserve, but no one around him seemed to think in these terms, and it turned out that he no longer did either.”

— Ann Napolitano

164. “He realizes – gripping the arms of his chair as hot pain blinks on and off in his midsection – that all the major chapters in his personal life started and ended on wrinkled bedsheets. All the wives, the would-be wives, the ex-wives, negotiated their terms in the bedroom.”

— Ann Napolitano

165. “Sylvie was being punished for the choice she’d made twenty-five years earlier. Even.”

— Ann Napolitano

166. “It was because she loved him that Rose had been so disappointed by her marriage and why it was essential that her girls grow up strong and educated, able to stand on their own two feet, unbowed by something as tricky and undependable as love.”

— Ann Napolitano

167. “He looks down at his busted legs, to avoid seeing the lethal sky.”

— Ann Napolitano

168. “Julia felt a deep gratitude to Manhattan, both for demanding all of her attention and for offering no reminders of her old life.”

— Ann Napolitano

169. “Julia specialized in answers. From the time she was old enough to speak, she’d bossed her sisters around, pointing out their problems and providing solutions. Sometimes her sisters found this irritating, but they would also admit that having a “master troubleshooter” in their.”

— Ann Napolitano

170. “Rose was axing a branch off her own family tree, which meant she was both inflicting and experiencing pain.”

— Ann Napolitano

171. “He reread the contents of the binder at night in bed, because the better prepared he was, the better chance he had of being helpful. William could feel the information swirling around inside him. He believed – even if that belief was couched in worry – that he could provide a service to this team that no one else could. It might be something small, almost unnoticeable, but there was something. He just had to figure out what it was.”

— Ann Napolitano

172. “What do you want? Sylvie wouldn’t have asked this question before, because she would have been afraid of the answer, but she wanted to be deeply and truly herself and to experience the world in the deepest and truest way.”

— Ann Napolitano

173. “The four sisters looked like different versions of the same person: They were parts of a whole.”

— Ann Napolitano

174. “He’d known his wife was dying, but he hadn’t expected her to die.”

— Ann Napolitano

175. “She’s one of those people who live way too much in their heads and are too invested in their careful plans.”

— Ann Napolitano

176. “Sylvie had read somewhere that the more times a story was told, the less accurate it became. Humans were prone to exaggeration; they leaned away from the parts of the narrative they found boring and leaned into the exciting spots. Details and timelines changed over years of repetition. The story became more myth and less true. Sylvie thought about how she and William rarely told their story and felt pleased; by not being shared, their love story remained intact.”

— Ann Napolitano

177. “He had been her person, and they’d passed books back and forth between them her entire life.”

— Ann Napolitano

178. “She’d carried a hesitation inside her ever since he’d met her at his basketball game when she was fourteen. Emeline had always seemed occupied with watching everyone else and trying to be helpful, but she’d stayed on the sidelines, as if it weren’t her turn to live.”

— Ann Napolitano

179. “Sylvie thought, This is worth dying for.”

— Ann Napolitano

180. “Julia decided to deep-clean the apartment.”

— Ann Napolitano

181. “He had given her substance by telling her story.”

— Ann Napolitano

182. “John gestures with his hand again, this time seeming to refer to everything: the photographs, the letters, middle age, marriage. “If you live long enough, everything is complicated.”

— Ann Napolitano

183. “The physical jolt shifts something inside Jordan, and a new truth yawns open: I do need them. I need all three of them. And while the plane hesitates, as if deciding its next move, his apartment now has a bunk bed to share with his brother and another bedroom, for his parents.”

— Ann Napolitano

184. “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

185. “He’d followed her every instruction, but eventually the directions had led him so far away from himself that he was no longer a person.”

— Ann Napolitano

186. “With no sleep, the days took on the emotional cast – and the loud losses – of the night.”

— Ann Napolitano

187. “Perhaps Sylvie’s body had been ultimately unable to bear the distance between Chicago and New York.”

— Ann Napolitano

188. “I know it sounds silly, but I’m proud of myself. I guess for living a brave life.”

— Ann Napolitano

189. “Sylvie had been hurt by Charlie’s death; Julia had been shipwrecked too. Charlie Padavano had felt essential to his daughters, as if he was part of their own construction.”

— Ann Napolitano

190. “Waters? A little sunshine never did anyone any harm.”

— Ann Napolitano

191. “Their mother was their safe space, and so, with her, they felt every iota of their feelings.”

— Ann Napolitano

192. “Nothing and no one existed in a vacuum.”

— Ann Napolitano

193. “He nods. Jordan was given the series as a birthday gift and then had the idea to take the books out of the library as well, so he and his brother could read them at the same time. They lay in their bunks for hours, for several weeks on end, mowing through one book after another. Jordan would call out from the top bunk: Holy cow, Eddie, are you on page 202 yet?”

— Ann Napolitano

194. “You’ll all set sail, as you should, and leave your mother and me here. It’s a tale as old as time.”

— Ann Napolitano

195. “And just like that, the two little girls in their beds on 18th Place were silenced. The child inside Julia lay wide-eyed in the dark, knowing that she was Jo, but only because Sylvie was Beth.”

— Ann Napolitano

196. “Sylvie was composed of question marks and feelings that she didn’t know what to do with, as if her hands were full and she was wearing pants with no pockets.”

— Ann Napolitano

197. “He watches his new life walk into his old life.”

— Ann Napolitano

198. “William wanted to cup his hands again, to hold close his love for his wife, to hold close her love for him.”

— Ann Napolitano

199. “He wanted to keep his place on the court, and he knew that if he made the other boys better, he had value.”

— Ann Napolitano

200. “The Padavanos talked about Charlie as if he were still part of their lives, still part of themselves, and because of that: He was.”

— Ann Napolitano