Top 250 Ann Napolitano Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “The Taking of MH370.”

— Ann Napolitano

202. “Sylvie aced the classes she was interested in but got C’s or D’s in everything else. Julia had operated her determination like a lawn mower and mowed through high school with the next step in her sights.”

— Ann Napolitano

203. “You know the quote about how the only reason for time is so everything doesn’t happen at once? I.”

— Ann Napolitano

204. “With his daughter gone, the man’s face never opened again.”

— Ann Napolitano

205. “This wasn’t on her calendar, which meant this moment could exist as a barnacle on the outside of her real life.”

— Ann Napolitano

206. “William was her one.”

— Ann Napolitano

207. “Imagine that I’m a house, and when I find my great love, I’ll become the entire world. Our love will show me so much more than I’ll be able to see on my own.”

— Ann Napolitano

208. “Alice turned her face upward, as if to study the night sky, as if she required a different vantage point to sort through what was inside her.”

— Ann Napolitano

209. “Mrs. Cox had also texted him on his birthday to say that.”

— Ann Napolitano

210. “This is why we live. She and William held.”

— Ann Napolitano

211. “She could see this possibility and the way grief and depression tangled inside him; Sylvie found that she could accept his choice even if she didn’t fully understand.”

— Ann Napolitano

212. “Sylvie wondered, looking at the mural, if bravery was wedded to loss: You did the unthinkable thing and paid a price.”

— Ann Napolitano

213. “Sylvie smiled at this. “She’s still a baby,” she said. “Do you remember how young we were when we were twenty-five? If there’s something wrong, you have time to fix it.”

— Ann Napolitano

214. “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

215. “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

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

— Ann Napolitano

217. “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

218. “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

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

— Ann Napolitano

220. “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

221. “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

222. “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

223. “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

224. “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

225. “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

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

— Ann Napolitano

227. “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

228. “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

229. “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

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

— Ann Napolitano

231. “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

232. “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

233. “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

234. “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

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

— Ann Napolitano

236. “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

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

— Ann Napolitano

238. “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

239. “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

240. “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

241. “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

242. “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

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

— Ann Napolitano

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

— Ann Napolitano

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

— Ann Napolitano

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

— Ann Napolitano

247. “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

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

— Ann Napolitano

249. “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

250. “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