Top 180 Audrey Niffenegger Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “He looks sad. Or maybe that’s just how he looks when he isn’t doing something else with his face.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

52. “I sometimes end up in dangerous situations, and I come back to you broken and messed up, and you worry about me when I’m gone. It’s like marrying a policeman.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

53. “Why has he gone where I cannot follow?”

— Audrey Niffenegger

54. “I love. I have loved. I will love.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

55. “I am afraid of the future; it seems to be a big box waiting for me.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

56. “I wish for a moment that time would lift me out of this day, and into some more benign one. But then I feel guilty for wanting to avoid the sadness; dead people need us to remember them, even if it eats us, even if all we can do is say “I’m sorry” until it is as meaningless air.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

57. “I wanted someone to love who would stay: stay and be there, always.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

58. “Our love has been the thread through the labyrinth, the net under the high-wire walker, the only real thing in this strange life of mine that I could ever trust. Tonight I feel that my love for you has more density in this world than I do, myself: as though it could linger on after me and surround you, keep you, hold you.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

59. “I am suddenly comsumed by nostalgia for the little girl who was me, who loved the fields and believed in God, who spent winter days home sick from school reading Nancy Drew and sucking menthol cough drops, who could keep a secret.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

60. “If you are far away from your lover and family, if you have lost someone, if you feel a bit displaced in your own life: these stories are for you.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

61. “We are often insane with happiness. We are also very unhappy for reasons neither of us can do anything about. Like being separated.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

62. “I think play must have been invented so we wouldn’t go mad thinking about certain things.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

63. “Time, let me vanish. Then what we separate by our very presence can come together.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

64. “I think about my mother singing after lunch on a Summer afternoon, twirling in blue dress across the floor of her dressing room.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

65. “That’s the thing about living vicariously; it’s so much faster than actual living.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

66. “Elspeth stood in the sun, letting it pour through her, watching the Kitten sleep. I want you. Elspeth felt depressed. She had never thought of herself as someone who would kill a beautiful white kitten while it napped. But apparently she was that sort of person. Don’t you worry, Kitten. I’ll put you right back.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

67. “Sometimes I’m happy when he’s gone, but I’m always happy when he returns. -Clare.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

68. “You’re my phantom limb, Mouse. I keep looking for you. I forget. I feel stupid, Mouse. Haunt me, find me, come back from wherever you are. Be with me.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

69. “Now I wonder if it means that the future is a place, or like a place, that I could go to; that is go to in some way other than just getting older.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

70. “In the dim light of the computer screen he seemed otherworldly; Julia thought him beautiful, though she knew it was the beauty of damage.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

71. “Very few people meet their soulmates at age six. So you gotta pass the time somehow. And Ingrid was very – patient. Overly patient. Willing to put up with odd behavior, in the hope that someday I would shape up and marry her martyred ass. And when somebody is that patient, you have to feel grateful, and then you want to hurt them. Does that make any sense?”

— Audrey Niffenegger

72. “This is good, I’m taking care of myself, I’m not being an idiot, I’m remembering to eat dinner.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

73. “Everything seems simple until you think about it. Why is love intensified by absence?”

— Audrey Niffenegger

74. “Clare seems so pleased with the idea of me as a pirate that she forgets that I am Stranger Danger.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

75. “I’m bored with knitting. I’ve taken up arson.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

76. “My reflection in the mirror shows me pink and puffy. I thought pregnant women were to supposed to glow. I am not glowing.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

77. “You’re the oddest person I’ve ever met, you couldn’t get rid of me if you tried.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

78. “I want to be haunted... Haunt me... Come and put your arms around me... Or, if you can’t do that, just look at me. That’s all I need. Where are you? Not here. But I can’t feel you gone either... I keep looking for you. I forget. I feel stupid... Haunt me, find me, come back from wherever you are. Be with me. I’m afraid.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

79. “There was only the cemetery itself, spread out in the moonlight like a soft grey hallucination, a stony wilderness of Victorian melancholy.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

80. “She’s going to break my heart and I’m going to let her.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

81. “Henry loves my hair almost as though it is a creature unto itself, as though it has a soul to call its own, as though it could love him back.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

82. “When it’s over you look up: the world looks the same but you are somehow different and that feeling lingers for days.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

83. “The hardest lesson is Clare’s solitude. Sometimes I come home and Clare seems kind of irritated; I’ve interrupted some train of thought, broken into the dreary silence of her day. Sometimes I see an expression on Clare’s face that is like a closed door. She has gone inside the room of her mind and is sitting there knitting or something. I’ve discovered that Clare likes to be alone. But when I return from time traveling she is always relieved to see me.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

84. “What is more basic than the need to be known? It is the entirety of intimacy, the elixir of love, this knowing.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

85. “But you make me happy. It’s living up to being happy that’s the difficult part.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

86. “I’ve noticed that Henry needs an incredible amount of physical activity all the time in order to be happy. It’s like hanging out with a greyhound.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

87. “It would be a bad joke if I fell and broke myself now.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

88. “Sometimes I am glad when Henry’s gone, but I am always glad when he come’s back.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

89. “That’s what alcoholics do. It’s in their job description: fall apart and then keep falling apart.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

90. “Is it sad to fancy David Tennant when you’re dead?”

— Audrey Niffenegger

91. “Doctors don’t believe anything unless you can prove it to them.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

92. “He said something interesting: he said that he thinks there is only free will when you are in time, in the present. He says in the past we can only do what we did, and we can only be there if we were there.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

93. “And Clare, always Clare.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

94. “Our coffee is so good we drink it ourselves!”

— Audrey Niffenegger

95. “Praise means nothing to Mama, she doesn’t believe it. Only criticism can flush her cheeks and catch her attention. If I were to say something disparaging she would remember it always.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

96. “You can still be cool when you’re dead. In fact, it’s much easier, because you aren’t getting old and fat and losing your hair.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

97. “The engagement ring is an emerald, and the dim light from the window is refracted green and white in it. The rings are silver, and they need cleaning. They need wearing, and I know just the girl to wear them.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

98. “When somebody is that patient, you have to feel grateful, and then you want to hurt them. Does that make any sense?”

— Audrey Niffenegger

99. “He was not in the house. He did not come back that night. Days went by, and at last she understood that he would not return at all.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

100. “How do we find the thing we are meant to do? How do we become ourselves? These are enormous questions for every young artists, but they can only be answered in retrospect. We see the path only after we’ve been on it for quite a long time. We read a book and we wonder how it was made. We wonder about the person who made it. We wonder if we could make something like that ourselves.”

— Audrey Niffenegger