Top 400 Becky Albertalli Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “So here’s the thing: Simon means “the one who hears” and Spier means “the one who watches.” Which means I was basically destined to be nosy.”

— Becky Albertalli

52. “Because that’s why bi girls exist, Garrett. For your masturbatory fantasies.”

— Becky Albertalli

53. “It’s not about waiting for the good parts of history. We’re the ones who have to make them happen. We have to draw the timeline ourselves.” “Yeah, well. Right now, that just feels like a fuckton of pointless work.” “But the work itself is the point. You keep doing it, because otherwise, how do you keep from feeling helpless? It’s like those sharks that keep swimming or they die,” I say. “It’s about the act of resisting. Waking up every day and deciding not to give up.”

— Becky Albertalli

54. “Sometimes happily ever afters aren’t about your happiness at all.”

— Becky Albertalli

55. “The universe knew it was love before we did.”

— Becky Albertalli

56. “Except, if I’m totally honest, I do believe it. Reid likes me. And I like that he likes me. But I’m not used to this game. It’s this totally new way of seeing myself. Like I’m some hazily lit dream girl from a movie. I’ve never been that girl before.”

— Becky Albertalli

57. “Here’s the thing: I’m used to being told I have a pretty face. Or pretty hair, or pretty eyes. But it’s different, being called beautiful. Just beautiful, without conditions.”

— Becky Albertalli

58. “When we say we want to freeze time, what we mean is that we want to control our memories. We want to choose which moments we’ll keep forever. We want to guarantee the best ones won’t slip away from us somehow. So when something beautiful happens, there’s this impulse to press pause and save the game. We want to make sure we can find our way back to that moment.”

— Becky Albertalli

59. “He tells me to pick the music. I’m not sure if he knows that handing me his iPod is like handing me the window to his soul.”

— Becky Albertalli

60. “People don’t warn you that heartbreak is a chronic condition. Maybe it quiets down a little over time, or you can muffle it with distance, but the ache never quite dials down to zero. It’s there lurking in the background, ready to flare back up the minute you let your guard down.”

— Becky Albertalli

61. “It’s ridiculous. Women are problematic if they show too much skin and problematic if they don’t show enough?”

— Becky Albertalli

62. “Then we just kind of stare at each other for a minute. Or ten minutes. Or ten hours. I don’t know how to measure time when Ben’s looking at me.”

— Becky Albertalli

63. “So, I keep thinking about the idea of secret identities. Do you ever feel locked into yourself? I’m not sure if I’m making sense here. I guess what I mean is that sometimes it seems like everyone knows who I am except me.”

— Becky Albertalli

64. “Do you ever have those random nights where your brain won’t shut off, even though your body feels like five hundred pounds off exhausted?”

— Becky Albertalli

65. “I can’t even help it. There’s just this thread of anticipation that I can’t seem to quell. So when the school day ends and nothing extraordinary has happened, it’s a tiny heartbreak. It’s like eleven o’clock on the night of your birthday, when you realize no one’s throwing you a surprise party after all.”

— Becky Albertalli

66. “But when you’re that pretty, you can date anyone, and people know you picked the geek on purpose. Like, you could have had the hot guy, but you didn’t want him. But when you’re a fat geek who likes another fat geek, everyone assumes you’re settling.”

— Becky Albertalli

67. “But sorry, he’s not good at being a best friend when he’s someone’s boyfriend.”

— Becky Albertalli

68. “I get locked into a cycle of not speaking. It’s like every time I think of something awesome to say, I rehearse it in my head so many times, I forget whether I’ve said it out loud yet. And I think it goes without saying that awesome one-liners are decidedly less awesome when you repeat them by accident. Better not to risk it.”

— Becky Albertalli

69. “I love his smile. I love his voice. I love his face. I love that he lives in my phone, even now. I love being his friend. His best friend.”

— Becky Albertalli

70. “It’s really amazing, isn’t it? Someone can trigger your sexual identity crisis and not have a clue they’re doing it.”

— Becky Albertalli

71. “I remember exactly how it felt to see that first message from him in my inbox. It was a little bit surreal. He wanted to know about me. For the next few days at school after that, it felt like I was a character in a movie. I could almost imagine a close-up of my face, projected wide-screen. It’s strange, because in reality, I’m not the leading guy. Maybe I’m the best friend.”

— Becky Albertalli

72. “Arthur, the universe just got the ball rolling,′ he says. ‘We made us happen.”

— Becky Albertalli

73. “I really love the smell of Waffle House. It’s this perfect combination of butter, maple syrup, bacon, and maybe onions? Whatever it is, they should bottle it up and pour it into a scented marker, so I can draw hot manga characters who smell like WaHo.”

— Becky Albertalli

74. “I try not to change, but I keep changing, in all these tiny ways... And every freaking time, I have to reintroduce myself to the universe all over again.”

— Becky Albertalli

75. “Once you come out, you can’t really go back in. It’s a little bit terrifying, isn’t it? I know we’re so lucky we’re coming out now and not twenty years ago, but it’s still really a leap of faith. It’s easier than I thought it would be, but at the same time, it’s so much harder.”

— Becky Albertalli

76. “I mean, here’s the thing I don’t get. How do people come to expect that their crushes will be reciprocated? Like, how does that get to be your default assumption?”

— Becky Albertalli

77. “There’s this tug in my chest. Because when Bram says Simon’s name, he pronounces every part of it. Like it’s worth being careful over.”

— Becky Albertalli

78. “Do you ever get so angry you start crying? And do you ever feel guilty for getting angry? Tell me I’m not weird.”

— Becky Albertalli

79. “I mean, I feel secure in my masculinity, too. Being secure in your masculinity isn’t the same as being straight.”

— Becky Albertalli

80. “You would matter. That’s the thing. I get into this weird place sometimes where I worry about that. I’ve never told anyone this – not my moms, not even Cassie – but that’s the thing I’m most afraid of. Not mattering. Existing in a world that doesn’t care who I am. It’s this whole other level of aloneness.”

— Becky Albertalli

81. “I believe in love at first sight. Fate, the universe, all of it. But not how you’re thinking. I don’t mean it in the our souls were split and you’re my other half forever and ever sort of way. I just think you’re meant to meet some people. I think the universe nudges them into your path.”

— Becky Albertalli

82. “Because I have to admit: there’s something really badass about truly, honestly not caring what people think about you.”

— Becky Albertalli

83. “She makes me want to shove my hand into my chest and rip my own heart out.”

— Becky Albertalli

84. “How does adding salt change the freezing and boiling points of water?” “The freezing point decreases and the boiling point increases.”

— Becky Albertalli

85. “In English class on Monday, my eyes find Bram immediately. He sits on the couch beside Garrett, wearing a collared shirt under a sweater, and he’s so freaking adorable that it almost hurts to look at him.”

— Becky Albertalli

86. “My favorite is always the halfway point, where Andy says, “Okay, whatever, I’m done. I’m over it.” But then, a split second later: “Okay, but ALSO, can I just say –.”

— Becky Albertalli

87. “I’m on the toilet at the 9:30 Club and I’m wondering how mermaids pee.”

— Becky Albertalli

88. “If someone says I’m sad, or asks me what’s wrong, or tells me not to cry, it’s like my body hears: NOW CRY. Like a command, even if I’m not actually sad.”

— Becky Albertalli

89. “I don’t know why I do this. I definitely wasn’t planning on telling my parents the post office story. Just like I wasn’t planning on telling them about my sad crush on Cody Feinman from Hebrew school. Or my even sadder crush on Jessie’s slightly younger brother. Or the fact that I’m gay in the first place. But sometimes things just slip out.”

— Becky Albertalli

90. “We’d never fall that far apart. But we’ll drift. Siblings always do. They marry other people and have their own families and forget the way they used to whisper in bunk beds. It’s as inevitable as an airplane landing.”

— Becky Albertalli

91. “But you know, there’s an upside here. Because when you spend so much time just intensely wanting something, and then you actually get the thing? It’s magic.” All.”

— Becky Albertalli

92. “And I’m the worst kind of Slytherin, I’m the kind who’s so stupidly in love with a Gryffindor, she can’t even function.”

— Becky Albertalli

93. “I think, for me, listening to music is a very solitary thing. Or maybe that’s just something people say when they’re too lame to go to live shows.”

— Becky Albertalli

94. “It’s stillness and pressure and rhythm and breathing.”

— Becky Albertalli

95. “You can’t imagine how much I hated middle school. Remember the way people would look at you blankly and say, “Um, okaaay,” after you finished talking? Everyone just had to make it so clear that, whatever you were thinking or feeling, you were totally alone. The worst part, of course, was that I did the same thing to other people. It makes me a little nauseated just remembering that.”

— Becky Albertalli

96. “Hi,” he says, quickly and softly. Like the word belongs to us.”

— Becky Albertalli

97. “But maybe there are always tiny sad pieces inside me, waiting to be recognized and named. Maybe it’s like that for everyone.”

— Becky Albertalli

98. “Nothing is worse than the secret humiliation of being insulted by proxy.”

— Becky Albertalli

99. “History’s a long game. It’s the longest long game.”

— Becky Albertalli

100. “Sometimes I feel like New Yorkers do New York wrong. Where are the people swinging from subway poles and dancing on fire escapes and kissing in Times Square? The post office flash mob proposal was a start, but when’s the next big number? I pictured New York like West Side Story plus In the Heights plus Avenue Q – but really, it’s just construction and traffic and iPhones and humidity.”

— Becky Albertalli