Top 150 Emery Lord Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “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

52. “Darkness might keep flooding in, but I finally had just enough light to find the way back to myself.”

— Emery Lord

53. “When it all closes in, there are only two kinds of people: best friends and everyone else.”

— Emery Lord

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

— Emery Lord

55. “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

56. “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

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

— Emery Lord

58. “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

59. “I may be stumbling through these steps, but at least I’m stumbling forward.”

— Emery Lord

60. “Seattle. It rains there a lot.” Well, this is going great. Conversationalist of the Year. I’ll just continue to recite basic facts about US cities until she wants to go out with me.”

— Emery Lord

61. “It was easy for me to be honest with him because there was nothing to lose.”

— Emery Lord

62. “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

63. “And I want to be one of them. I want to be one of them so, so badly – to fit into this balance, their history, the wolf pack way of them. I see it now, why my mom wants that for me. I see how you can’t help but want it, if you get close enough to witness a group of friends knitted together like this.”

— Emery Lord

64. “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

65. “It was only three years ago, but I looked so young, with that carefree smile. Like I had no idea how vicious the world could be.”

— Emery Lord

66. “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

67. “Later in my room, I lift up my dress and twist to see the rainbow splotch of lotus on my side. And it occurs to me, what if I stopped hating it? What if the tattoo and the scar and this summer’s freckles are my patina? Wabi-Sabi says rust and faded paint hold beauty. So what if I let these marks be passport stamps from where I’ve been – one’s that don’t determine a damn thing about where I’m going next?”

— Emery Lord

68. “I swear his looks are pure Darwinism. If he wasn’t so cute, someone would have killed him for being annoying by now.”

— Emery Lord

69. “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

70. “When does it stop-the longing to be mothered?”

— Emery Lord

71. “I would crawl to wherever you were, emotionally, so that you wouldn’t feel alone.”

— Emery Lord

72. “Girls will move across the country with a boyfriend they’ve known less than a year, and people think that’s normal because it’s romantic love. But living with your best friend? Or for Dee, staying close to her parents and brothers? I don’t think that’s weird or codependent. I think it’s basic: if you find people you love, you want to be near them.”

— Emery Lord

73. “She’d tell her daughters someday: ‘If you don’t feel safe enough to yell back, you’re not safe enough. My babies, that is not love.”

— Emery Lord

74. “After all, the night sky is a mess of stars – a million fireflies crammed into infinity. But the mess becomes a map once you know how to use it.”

— Emery Lord

75. “I think I’ve loved you since that first day.”

— Emery Lord

76. “I don’t appreciate how often people hide their scars and doubts. Really, it’s not fair to people who are struggling, to go on believing that everyone else just has it totally together and never has one bad thought in their lives. Like, I know you people sometimes lie awake at night torturing yourself over the atrocities in this world and morality and meaning. I know you’re not just dreaming about riding a pink pony to your job as a cupcake taster.”

— Emery Lord

77. “Of all Tessa’s qualities, that was maybe the one I admired the most: she knew how to sit inside my sadness with me.”

— Emery Lord

78. “Every once in a while, her temper flashes. It’s like she’s exhausted from beating down her demons.”

— Emery Lord

79. “We know there are three little words branded inside my heart: Jonah was here.”

— Emery Lord

80. “Jonah looks at me so admiringly, and my heart bounces like a pinball from my stomach to my throat to either side of my rib cage.”

— Emery Lord

81. “That’s the thing they never tell you about love stories: just because one ends, that doesn’t mean it failed.”

— Emery Lord

82. “This is because she doesn’t know about me picking a fight with Shruggy Jesus or rolling around topless with Lukas. My soul has already put on a blinker for the Hell exit, and now I live at hippie camp. That’s like sending me into the express lane.”

— Emery Lord

83. “He’s the ‘him’ in every sentence that really matters; he’s the ‘he’ in every song.”

— Emery Lord

84. “I wanted him for myself, but I want adventure for him, too – and for me.”

— Emery Lord

85. “I take a step closer to her because that’s my impulse – to be near her.”

— Emery Lord

86. “I believe in nature, in science, in jazz, in dancing. And I believe in people. In their resilience, in their goodness. This is my credo; this is my hymn. Maybe it’s not enough for heaven, and maybe I’m even wrong. But if I can walk through the fire and, with blistered skin, still have faith in better days? I have to believe that’s good enough.”

— Emery Lord

87. “Howidoono?” Dee tries to ask, but there’s a mound of Brown Butter Almond Brittle ice cream on her tongue. “How did you know I needed this?” He gives her an “oh please” look. “I have a sister and a girl best friend. This is not amateur hour.”

— Emery Lord

88. “We sat there in our flower crowns until the world went dark, until we were half-sick from sugar but still laughing, laughing, laughing like the almost-invincible girls we were. Happy.”

— Emery Lord

89. “Hasn’t Daybreak shown me, day after day, that people can outlast unbelievable pain? That human hearts are like noble little ants, able to carry so much more weight than you’d expect.”

— Emery Lord

90. “Every girl wants to be Dorothy Gale or maybe Glinda. I never wanted to be the tornado.”

— Emery Lord

91. “The idea of moving forward is hard. But everything you really need? You can take it with you.”

— Emery Lord

92. “It was the baptism of myself, the renewal of me and by me. The water felt, finally, like it could wash away the dust of the past, cleaning off the second skin of sadness.”

— Emery Lord

93. “So maybe I don’t know what’ll happen. But it’s nice to have someone to not know with you.”

— Emery Lord

94. “Ryan Chase was my eighth-grade collage, aspirational and wide-eyed. But Max was the first bite of grilled cheese on a snowy day, the easy fit of my favorite jeans, that one old song that made it onto every playlist. Peanut-butter Girl Scout cookies instead of an ornate cake. Not glamorous or idealized or complicated. Just me.”

— Emery Lord

95. “It’s okay,” he says, eyes closed. He’s not even awake. “It’s okay.” He says these words even in his sleep, like he has said them so often that it’s his mouths default sentiment. All this pain in his life, all this care he doles out to everyone else. And yet he still cracks his broken heart open even wider-wide enough to fit me, too. I wonder how much this must hurt him, the toll it must take to give more of himself to me when he already has so little left to give.”

— Emery Lord

96. “You have a big life ahead of you, sweet girl. And beginning again gets easier with each step.”

— Emery Lord

97. “He said the measure of the man is in those decisions. Do you keep yourself and your family safe in harbor, always? Or do you move forward and brave the storms?”

— Emery Lord

98. “To the deepest, most cellular level of my being, I resent people who believe that depression is the same as weakness, that “sad” people must be coddled like helpless toddlers.”

— Emery Lord

99. “I’m looking for somekind of permanence, so my mark will linger on the world once I’m gone, in the places where I found joy... ” -Page 81.”

— Emery Lord

100. “I couldn’t master this kind of apathy, no matter how hard I tried. I was built to care – to notice, to overanalyze, to try – in a way that felt inalterable.”

— Emery Lord