Top 150 Emery Lord Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I’ve prowled the dirtiest back alleys of sadness, okay? And I know what it’s like to fight for your life on those mean streets. So if you need someone to vent to or someone to be quiet with or someone to talk your ear off, I can be that person. I’m not scared of the dark places.”

— Emery Lord

2. “Sometimes we get it wrong the first time. But you only have to get it right once.”

— Emery Lord

3. “Depression, it settles like a shadow over your body while you sleep, and it mutes every frequency into blankness, into fog. Everyone things you can’t laugh when you’re depressed, but I couldn’t cry either, because I couldn’t FEEL.”

— Emery Lord

4. “Most complicated things in life are actually pretty simple at the core. We put so much extra nonsense in the middle that we can’t even see how easy it really is.”

— Emery Lord

5. “And just like that, we’re on our way to everywhere.”

— Emery Lord

6. “His eyes are somewhere between gray and blue, and his hair is somewhere between brown and blond, and I am somewhere between hostile and attracted.”

— Emery Lord

7. “I was too tired, too sad, too much of everything.”

— Emery Lord

8. “In books, sometimes the foreshadowing is so obvious that you know what’s going to happen. But knowing what happens isn’t the same as knowing how it happens. Getting there is the best part.”

— Emery Lord

9. “My eyes fill, hot with tears. Because, apparently, casual crying is just something that I do now.”

— Emery Lord

10. “I know this feeling of being a ghost in your own life – no one sees you, no one feels you, so you stay still as if you could actually disappear at any moment.”

— Emery Lord

11. “Maybe in my next life, I’ll be a wave in the ocean, and you’ll be a mountain, and we’ll spend years and years brushing up against each other. You’ll shift so painfully slowly, and some days I’ll crash right into you and other days I’ll approach gently, licking your sides. That sounds like us, doesn’t it?”

— Emery Lord

12. “With our arms around each other, I almost believed that strength could travel between us like the heat of our bodies. Nothing, not even sadness, could be greater than the sum of us.”

— Emery Lord

13. “My dark days made me strong. Or maybe I already was strong, and they made me prove it. Jonah Daniels has his own grief, but he doesn’t understand what it feels like to waste away in a castle dungeon where you have been chained to crumbling walls. And, when the dragons close in, you only think: Good. Let this be over.”

— Emery Lord

14. “That’s the thing they never tell you about love stories: just because one ends, that doesn’t mean it failed. A cherry pie isn’t a failure just because you eat it all. It’s perfect for what it is, and then it’s gone. And exchanging the truest parts of yourself – all the things you are – with someone? What a slice of life. One I’ll carry with me into every single someday.”

— Emery Lord

15. “You change as you get older, especially at this time in your life. You become more yourself, hopefully. And sometimes that changes the dynamic, even with people you love. So it’s not that you were wrong. You were right for that time. But you grow up and you grow out of relationships. Even the ones you thought, at one point, might be forever.” .”

— Emery Lord

16. “A rigid old tree like me – it snaps in a raging storm. The pliant tree bends in the rain and survives.”

— Emery Lord

17. “And I say a final last prayer, this one in gratitude that there are people in the world who will protect kids with a fire that makes them sprint after cars, fight systems, curse with rage. It’s enough to make you believe. Maybe not in symbols; maybe not in gods. But certainly in people.”

— Emery Lord

18. “You can be okay again. Just a different kind of okay than before.”

— Emery Lord

19. “We’re born alone, and we die alone.”

— Emery Lord

20. “Sometimes I feel empty like a new canvas.”

— Emery Lord

21. “Sadness still fell – the soft pitter-patter of spring rain – but each small joy opened like an umbrella right above me.”

— Emery Lord

22. “Do you want me to beg you? Do you want me to say please? Then this song is the rest of my pride, girl. This song is me down on my knees.”

— Emery Lord

23. “Human hearts are like noble little ants, able to carry so much more weight than you’d expect.”

— Emery Lord

24. “I keep wondering if it’ll ever hurt less. This... this hole in our lives.” “Oh, I imagine it’ll hurt less eventually. I think there will always be a hole, though. But lace is one of the most beautiful fabrics, you know. All those holes and gaps, but it’s still complete somehow- still lovely.”

— Emery Lord

25. “Even the constellations can see us now: we are seventeen and shattered and still dancing. We have messy, throbbing hearts, and we are stronger than anyone could ever know.”

— Emery Lord

26. “I don’t feel like being touched by anyone or anything except the clouds.”

— Emery Lord

27. “I vaguely remember a story about a woman who looked back while fleeing a broken city. She turned into a pillar of salt. A harsh fate, but I got the point. You can’t look back when you’re escaping disaster. You can’t hope that someone will come after you, either.”

— Emery Lord

28. “Everything else will fall into place. Just live your life.”

— Emery Lord

29. “I drink coffee for the taste, of course, since caffeine is the last thing I need. Most of the things I do in life are for flavor, not necessity.”

— Emery Lord

30. “Maybe we were dying planets, Jonah, being drawn into the darkness.” I hold my right palm against his cheek, and I wish I could touch him with both my hands. “When we collided, we bounced each other back into orbit. And now we have to do that – we have to return to our own paths because that’s what we gave each other.”

— Emery Lord

31. “I’m not sure why I feel lonely instead of just alone.”

— Emery Lord

32. “We all owe each other for a thousand small kindnesses, for little moments of grace in the chaos.”

— Emery Lord

33. “So far away, but so beautiful. So powerful. I can always feel it tugging at me.”

— Emery Lord

34. “If you’re lucky, relationships – with family or friends or boyfriends – are limitless. There’s no maximum on how much you can love each other. The problem is, there’s also no limit to how much you can hurt each other.”

— Emery Lord

35. “Here is something I never expected to feel: love at first sight for an entire family. But life suprises you. It tells you to close your eyes and blow out the candles, and then sometimes smashes your face into the cake before you can even make a wish. But! Sometimes, every once in a while, you get your wish in. You wish for a boy to spend the summer with, and instead life gives you his whole beauiful family.”

— Emery Lord

36. “A cherry pie isn’t a failure just because you eat it all. It’s perfect for what it is, and then it’s gone.”

— Emery Lord

37. “Should have, should have, should have. I’m sick of those words biting at my ankles no matter where I walk.”

— Emery Lord

38. “I almost try to explain another untranslatable word – sunyata – to Jonas. The idea has Buddhist roots and several meanings, depending on context. I think emptiness is the closest word, but, in English, we infer emptiness as a void, a lack. Sunyata is open with possibility, a meditative space.”

— Emery Lord

39. “Beauty is truth and truth beauty. This is one of the great questions of all art, including writing. What makes something beautiful? What makes it truthful? Beauty is subjective. Is truth? Are they really related?”

— Emery Lord

40. “But the point is that trying to make things better sometimes makes us better, too. The point is I’m trying to create good things in the midst of the bad. Grief or no grief. And in my case, it’s still somewhere in between.”

— Emery Lord

41. “Viv, I just made you wild-caught Alaskan salmon baked with mango chutney, on a bed of garlic red potatoes and arugula. While talking about an Audrey Hepburn movie. I think you are maybe falling in love with me.”

— Emery Lord

42. “But my mom says the best revenge is living well, and I believe her.”

— Emery Lord

43. “I don’t mind being introduced to people’s skeletons firsthand, in person. I more than don’t mind it. I prefer to reach right into the closet and shake their bony hands and say hello for myself.”

— Emery Lord

44. “The morning sun has edged past the horizon line, casting shadows of the leaves like lace on the sidewalk. Flowers burst throughout every inch of the town- fuschia roses crawling over trellises, forsythia blazing like yellow fireworks. As I walk down the sidewalk, the trees undress above me, dropping pale pink petals like a slow burlesque.”

— Emery Lord

45. “I close my eyes, trying to decipher how it feels.”

— Emery Lord

46. “Nothing, not even sadness could be greater than the sum of us.”

— Emery Lord

47. “There I was, clinging to the scraps of happiness that I could finally feel again: coffee and books and an afternoon with my best friend. What right did I have, when he was gone?”

— Emery Lord

48. “Because with true friends, no one is keeping score. But it still feels good to repay them – even in the tiniest increments.”

— Emery Lord

49. “The glow of my birthday candles and the fairy lights would have been more than enough. But Jonah Daniels? He lit up my whole world.”

— Emery Lord

50. “Grief is slow. It’s like wringing out a washcloth. Even after you think it’s dry, a few more drops will form.”

— Emery Lord