Top 250 E. Lockhart Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 3 of 6

101. “We looked at the sky. So many stars, it seemed like a celebration, a grand, illicit party the galaxy was holding after the humans had been put to bed.”

— E. Lockhart

102. “People think of hearts when they think of love, but a heart is a bloody organ in the body. It doesn’t have any emotions. It’s like a metaphor for love that has nothing to do with what love actually is.”

— E. Lockhart

103. “No one here is a criminal. No one is an addict. No one is a failure.”

— E. Lockhart

104. “Blood gushed rhythmically from my open wound, then from my eyes, my ears, my mouth. It tasted like salt and failure. The bright red shame of being unloved soaked the grass in front of our house, the bricks of the path, the steps to the porch. My heart spasmed among the peonies like a trout.”

— E. Lockhart

105. “So just be normal,” he says, “at least for today. Let’s pretend I’m not a mess, let’s pretend you’re not angry. Let’s act like we’re friends and forget what happened.” I don’t want to pretend. I don’t want to be friends. I don’t want to forget. I am trying to remember.”

— E. Lockhart

106. “It is better to be alone, she figures, than to be with someone who can’t see who you are. It is better to lead than to follow. It is better to speak up than stay silent. It is better to open doors than to shut them on people.”

— E. Lockhart

107. “But you can be talky and paint your fingernails and still be very sad. In fact, you can be talky and paint your fingernails to protect other people from how sad you are.”

— E. Lockhart

108. “I wanted to touch him like he was a bunny, a kitten, something so special and soft your fingertips can’t leave it alone. The universe was good because he was in it.”

— E. Lockhart

109. “They know that tragedy is not glamorous. They know it doesn’t play out in life as it does on a stage or between the pages of a book. It is neither a punishment meted out nor a lesson conferred. Its horrors are not attributable to one single person. Tragedy is ugly and tangled, stupid and confusing.”

— E. Lockhart

110. “Yes, it’s true that I fell in love with someone and that he died, along with the two other people I loved best in this world. That has been the main thing to know about me, the only thing about me for a very long time, although I didn’t know it myself. But there must be more to know. There will be more.”

— E. Lockhart

111. “It was love, and it hit me so hard I leaned against the screen door that still stood between us, just to stay vertical. I wanted to touch him like he was a bunny, a kitten, something so special and soft your fingertips can’t leave it alone. The universe was good because he was in it.”

— E. Lockhart

112. “It was love, and it hit me so hard I leaned against the screen door that still stood between us, just to stay vertical. I wanted to touch him like he was a bunny, a kitten, something so special and soft your fingertips can’t leave it alone. The universe was good because he was in it. I loved the hole in his jeans and the dirt on his bare feet and the scrab on his elbow and the scar that laced through one eyebrow. Gat, my Gat.”

— E. Lockhart

113. “Jule had many rare talents. She worked hard and really had so damn much to offer. She knew all that. So why did she feel worthless at the same time?”

— E. Lockhart

114. “She confused being sick with being brave, and suffered agonies while imagining she merited praise for it.”

— E. Lockhart

115. “We’re not friends, Ms. Williams. You’re lying to me half the time, and I’m lying to you all the time.”

— E. Lockhart

116. “Now, let me ask you this. Who killed the girls? The dragon? Or their father?”

— E. Lockhart

117. “Still, she has an aura of mystery that stops her from being teased or singled out for typical high school unpleasantness. Her mother is a Sinclair.”

— E. Lockhart

118. “Maybe a friend is someone who wants your updates. Even if they’re boring. Or sad. Or annoyingly cutesy. A friend says “Sign me up for your boring crap, yes indeed”-because he likes you anyways. He’ll tolerate your junk.”

— E. Lockhart

119. “They built three new houses on their craggy private island and gave them each a name: Windemere for Penny, Red Gate for Carrie, and Cuddledown for Bess.”

— E. Lockhart

120. “You would have been a light in the dark for so many people.”

— E. Lockhart

121. “She looked the same, looked just like anyone, but she saw the world differently after that. To be a physically powerful woman – it was something. You could go anywhere, do anything, if you were difficult to hurt.”

— E. Lockhart

122. “After a minute, Gat leaned back and let me go first. “Not because you’re a girl but because I’m a good person,” he told me.”

— E. Lockhart

123. “She doesn’t feel like crying anymore.”

— E. Lockhart

124. “He didn’t believe in God anymore and yet he still wished that God would help him.”

— E. Lockhart

125. “I own a well-used library card and not much else, though it is true I live in a grand house full of expensive, useless objects.”

— E. Lockhart

126. “I lie in my darkened room. Scavenger birds peck at the oozing matter that leaks from my crushed skull.”

— E. Lockhart

127. “Don’t call me Alessandro, or this could get ugly. Oh, then may I call you Alice?”

— E. Lockhart

128. “Tragedy is ugly and tangled, stupid and confusing.”

— E. Lockhart

129. “When we say Shut up, Gat, that isn’t what we mean at all.”

— E. Lockhart

130. “The presentation of self in everyday life. This guy Goffman had the idea that in different situations, you perform yourself differently. Your character isn’t static. It’s an adaptation.”

— E. Lockhart

131. “They do sometimes go crazy, these people, because the world is telling them not to want the things they want. It can seem saner to give up-But then one goes insane from giving up.”

— E. Lockhart

132. “I am so angry. And so happy to see him.”

— E. Lockhart

133. “The question is: how to be a good person if I don’t believe anymore.”

— E. Lockhart

134. “It’s just a house. Lots of houses seem scary at night, but in the morning, they are friendly again.”

— E. Lockhart

135. “We tossed stones into the water. We just existed.”

— E. Lockhart

136. “I loved the hole in his jeans and the dirt on his bare feet and the scab on his elbow and the scar that laced through one eyebrow.”

— E. Lockhart

137. “It all seems so sad, so unbearably sad for a second, to think of the lovely old maple with the swing. We never told the tree how much we loved it. We never gave it a name, never did anything for it.”

— E. Lockhart

138. “If those are your friends, you’ve got no need for enemies.”

— E. Lockhart

139. “I flinch. “Don’t feel sorry for me, okay? Not ever. It makes my skin crawl.”

— E. Lockhart

140. “There’s something about seeing a guy’s feelings written down, something about him taking that risk and committing that heart to paper, that means so much more than anything he could just say.”

— E. Lockhart

141. “People befriend me because they think I’m happy. I’m not even sure why they think I’m happy, but they do. I get distracted, and I laugh, and I turn something on in myself that makes me, maybe, fun to be with. And I’m just – I want you to know up front that I’m false advertising.”

— E. Lockhart

142. “That’s the thing,” said Gat. “Everyone’s always asking Harris about everything. Why should a grown woman have to ask her father to approve her wedding?”

— E. Lockhart

143. “So many have the same premise: once upon a time, there were three. Three of something: three pigs, three bears, three brothers, three soldiers, three billy goats. Three princesses.”

— E. Lockhart

144. “Frankie appreciated both the accolades and the rejections equally, because both meant she’d had an impact. She wasn’t a person who needed to be liked so much as she was a person who liked to be notorious.”

— E. Lockhart

145. “I love him, but I am not sure I like him.”

— E. Lockhart

146. “I think an inspirational quote can get you through hard times.” “Like what?” asks Gat. Mirren pauses. Then she says: “Be a little kinder than you have to.”

— E. Lockhart

147. “For the college essay, she wrote that in these stories, being orphaned is a precondition for the making of a hero. She also said those comic book heroes aren’t simple heroes, but ’complicated ones who make moral compromises in the same tradition as the orphans in Victorian narratives.”

— E. Lockhart

148. “I was talking about Cady’s hair,” says Bonnie. “You don’t have to tell her she looks dead.” “It’s okay,” I tell Bonnie. “I don’t actually care what you think, so it’s perfectly okay.”

— E. Lockhart

149. “I am the center of the story now, Jule said to herself. I don’t have to weigh very little, wear very little, or have my teeth fixed. I am the center.”

— E. Lockhart

150. “In a profound, symbolic gesture, I am giving you this bar of Vosges I got when we went to Edgartown. You can eat it, or just sit next to it and feel superior.”

— E. Lockhart