Top 250 E. Lockhart Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “One day when no one else was around, I went into the craft room at the back of the ground floor. I touched Gran’s collection of fabrics, the shiny bright buttons, the coloured threads. My head and shoulders melted first, followed by my hips and knees. Before long I was a puddle, soaking into the pretty cotton prints. I drenched the quilt she never finished, rusted the metal parts of her sewing machine. I was pure liquid loss...”

— E. Lockhart

202. “And in the end, after he broke up with me and I was sad and mental, I came to the Vineyard and one day I thought: Eff you, Mr. Isaac. I’m not so very ignorant. I just know stuff about stuff that you dismiss as unimportant and useless. Does that make sense?”

— E. Lockhart

203. “I think an inspirational quote can get you through hard times.”

— E. Lockhart

204. “So this Estella breaks the boy’s heart?” “Many times over. On purpose. Estella doesn’t know how to do anything else. Breaking hearts is her only power in the world.”

— E. Lockhart

205. “I don’t know if there is a one for me. I think I might like variety.”

— E. Lockhart

206. “The fact that I couldn’t understand his life experience very well, combined with how he was a year ahead of me and really into all his academics, the literary magazine, et cetera – that meant that all the time, he got to be the big man and I was looking up at him with wide eyes. And that was what he liked about me. And why he despised me.”

— E. Lockhart

207. “She wanted to see all his scars, see all of him, and she felt suddenly, intensely certain that he was a safe person to show her own scars to.”

— E. Lockhart

208. “The woman pushed up the arms of her long-sleeved shirt and turned to the digital readout of her treadmill. A scar wound down her right forearm, jagged, like from a knife, not clean like from an operation. There was a story there.”

— E. Lockhart

209. “You are my girlfriend,” whispered Matthew. ” You’re my girl and I’m your guy, and you’re my girl and I’m your guy. Let’s not fight.”

— E. Lockhart

210. “It was part of their mission as a secret society – as it is part of the mission of most secret societies, actually – to not be entirely secret.”

— E. Lockhart

211. “My problem is I can think whatever I think – girl power, solidarity, Gloria Steinem rah rah rah – but I still feel the way I feel. Which is jealous. And pissy about little things.”

— E. Lockhart

212. “Immie put on her sunglasses. “Forrest’s writing a novel.” “What kind of novel?” asked Jule. “A little Samuel Beckett meets Hunter S. Thompson,” said Forrest. “And I’m a big fan of Pynchon, so he’s an influence.”

— E. Lockhart

213. “Isaac liked me because I was ignorant and that meant he could teach me, right? That made him feel like a man.”

— E. Lockhart

214. “Singin’ in the Rain was most excellent if you like movies where people burst into song and tap-dance. Which I do, though not as much as I like movies where people don’t.”

— E. Lockhart

215. “I love the idea of the big life – the life that matters, the life that makes a difference. The life where stuff happens, where people take action. The opposite of the life where the girl can’t even speak to the boy she likes; the opposite of the life where the friends aren’t even good friends, and lots of days are wasted away feeling bored and kind of okay, like nothing matters much.”

— E. Lockhart

216. “I never got an explanation. I just know he left me.”

— E. Lockhart

217. “People with money love Gershwin.”

— E. Lockhart

218. “You think it’s normal to get what you want all the time,” said Jule. “For things to be easy. But it isn’t. Most people don’t get what they want, like, ever. They have doors shut in their faces. They have to strive, all the time. They don’t live in your magical land of two-seater cars and perfect teeth and traveling to Italy and fur coats.”

— E. Lockhart

219. “So she did not replay, but played the strategist. She retained more power by withholding an answer.”

— E. Lockhart

220. “Sometimes things are fragile. That’s why they’re valuable.”

— E. Lockhart

221. “I don’t even have my real face anymore, I don’t even know who I see in the mirror.”

— E. Lockhart

222. “They were paragons of self-sacrificing womanhood. Like, ‘I’m starving to death! Here, eat my only bakery bun!’ ‘I can’t walk, I’m paralyzed, but still I see the bright side of life, happy happy!’ A Little Princess and Pollyanna, let me tell you, they are selling you a pack of ugly lies.”

— E. Lockhart

223. “I grew up with very normal, stable people,” Brooke continued. “We acted normal all day long in my family. So normal I wanted to stab my eyes out. So I’m like an expert. And you? You are not normal. You should think about getting help for it, is what I’m saying.”

— E. Lockhart

224. “Lots of girls don’t notice when they are in this situation. They are so focused on their boyfriends that they don’t remember they had a life at all before their romances, so they don’t become upset that the boyfriend isn’t interested.”

— E. Lockhart

225. “Now that I am grown, I think don’t take no for an answer is a lesson we teach boys who would be better off learning that no means no.”

— E. Lockhart

226. “Yeah.” Gat was silent for a moment. “Do you believe in God?” “Halfway.” I tried to think about it seriously. I knew Gat wouldn’t settle for a flippant answer. “When things are bad, I’ll pray or imagine someone watching over me, listening. Like the first few days after my dad left, I thought about God. For protection. But the rest of the time, I’m trudging along in my everyday life. It’s not even slightly spiritual.”

— E. Lockhart

227. “Grandad’s voice boomed across the yard. ‘This is the United States of America,’ he said. ‘You don’t seem to understand that, Penny, so let me explain. In America, here is how we operate. We work for what we want, and we get ahead. We never take no for an answer, and we deserve the rewards of our perseverance... We Sinclairs are a grand, old family. That is something to be proud of. Our traditions and values form the bedrock on which future generations stand.”

— E. Lockhart

228. “They want you to be small and silent. Good was just another word for don’t fight back.”

— E. Lockhart

229. “She would love herself, even with her sadness and her distractibility, her defenses and her failures. The process of making would stretch open the universe until it was frighteningly and gloriously wide with possibility.”

— E. Lockhart

230. “Think of your happy memories. Know they are still in you. They are part of you. And maybe even they ARE you.”

— E. Lockhart

231. “What a lovely way to burn.”

— E. Lockhart

232. “It’s better, I think, to move on. To look forward.”

— E. Lockhart

233. “We can argue about it in hell.”

— E. Lockhart

234. “Do you understand, Cady? Silence is a protective coating over pain.”

— E. Lockhart

235. “Telling this story will be painful. In fact, I do not know if I can tell it truthfully, though I’ll try. I have been a liar all my life, you see. It’s not uncommon in our family.”

— E. Lockhart

236. “We burned not a home, but a symbol. We burned a symbol to the ground.”

— E. Lockhart

237. “I do not love my father’s way of thinking, but much of it has become mine.”

— E. Lockhart

238. “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.”

— E. Lockhart

239. “We were warm and shivering, and young and ancient, and alive.”

— E. Lockhart

240. “No one in this family can see what’s right in front of them.”

— E. Lockhart

241. “Here is something I love about Gat: he is so enthusiastic, so relentlessly interested in the world, that he has trouble imagining the possibility that other people will be bored by what he’s saying. Even when they tell him outright. But also, he doesn’t like to let us off easy. He wants to make us think – even when we don’t feel like thinking.”

— E. Lockhart

242. “A game like that is typical for Tipper. She looks for ways to squeeze any last drop of pleasure from a situation, to create joy and surprise whenever she can.”

— E. Lockhart

243. “Johnny leapt off the boat and threw his own vest on the dock. First thing, he ran up to Mirren and kicked her. Then he kicked me. Kicked the twins. Walked over to our grandparents and stood up straight. “Good to see you, Granny and Granddad. I look forward to a happy summer.”

— E. Lockhart

244. “I’m not sorry. For anything. At all.”

— E. Lockhart

245. “It doesn’t matter if one of us is desperately, desperately in love. So much in love, that equally desperate measures must be taken.”

— E. Lockhart

246. “For a moment, the two of us were alone on the planet, with all the vastness of the sky and the future and the past spreading out around us.”

— E. Lockhart

247. “It’s joy,’ said Tipper. ‘I aim to live a joyful life, Carrie. And I think you should, too. I think maybe you’ve lost track of that, a little.”

— E. Lockhart

248. “My boyfriend is named Percocet,” I say. “We’re very close. I even went to Europe with him last summer.”

— E. Lockhart

249. “ME, JOHNNY, MIRREN, and Gat. Gat, Mirren, Johnny, and me. The family calls us four the Liars, and probably we deserve it.”

— E. Lockhart

250. “I don’t actually care what you think so it’s perfectly okay.”

— E. Lockhart