Top 500 Emily Henry Quotes (2026 Update)
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451. “This was meant to be the moment that I became the adult, hugging her tight, promising everything would be okay, taking her pain. That’s what grown daughters did for their mothers. But back in the church, I’d torn in half and everything had spilled out of me into plain view for the first time.”

— Emily Henry

452. “When did writing get so hard? I wrote back. Hard, he wrote. He wasn’t always the instigator. On Wednesday, after resisting as long as I possibly could, I wrote, Wish you were here and drew an arrow down toward myself.”

— Emily Henry

453. “I did what any reasonable adult woman would do when confronted with her college rival turned next-door neighbor. I dove behind the nearest bookshelf.”

— Emily Henry

454. “I didn’t even remember to miss her until I got home. That’s how it always is when I’m with you. No one else matters.”

— Emily Henry

455. “Maybe that’s why he can handle the public affection. Maybe, like me, when we’re together he feels like no one else is there, like they’re phantoms we dreamed up as set dressing.”

— Emily Henry

456. “He whispers, “You’re not that tall.” I whisper back, “I’m as tall as you.” “I’m not that tall,” he says. What my body hears is, Let’s make out.”

— Emily Henry

457. “More than once, I thought miserably. Something real, even if a little misshapen.”

— Emily Henry

458. “It was just another good day. A perfect day. A Happy for Now so vast and deep that I knew – or rather believed – I didn’t have to worry about tomorrow.”

— Emily Henry

459. “We are young, Harry. We’ll always be young. It’s a state of mind.”

— Emily Henry

460. “He leans in again, his hand catching my chin, his thumb landing squarely on the divot at the corner of my lips. My breath catches. His voice is low and raspy: “Liar.”

— Emily Henry

461. “For a few moments, we just smile at each other. It’s the least awkward extended eye contact of my life. It feels like we’ve both signed on for the same activity, and this is it: existing, at each other.”

— Emily Henry

462. “It’s by this married couple who usually publish separately. One of them writes literary doorstop novels and the other writes romance.”

— Emily Henry

463. “There are easier places to live, but New York’s a city filled with hungry people, their shared want a thrumming energy.”

— Emily Henry

464. “Mom and Libby liked the love stories where everything turned out perfectly, wrapped in a bow, and I’ve always wondered why I gravitate toward something else. I used to think it was because people like me don’t get those endings. And asking for it, hoping for it, is a way to lose something you’ve never even had. The ones that speak to me are those whose final pages admit there is no going back. That every good thing must end.”

— Emily Henry

465. “In college, I’d thought he was lazy about everything except writing. Now I wondered if he was simply tired, if life had beaten him into a permanent slouch, folded him over himself so no one could get at that soft center.”

— Emily Henry

466. “Everyone here looks like they came straight from climbing Everest or doing drugs in a Coachella yurt.”

— Emily Henry

467. “He was right about one thing, though. He can’t tell me what I want.”

— Emily Henry

468. “And that’s how it is in real life too. You can love someone and still know the future you’d have with them wouldn’t work for you, or for them, or maybe even for both of you.”

— Emily Henry

469. “If she can’t be there, there’s no point in dreaming at all.”

— Emily Henry

470. “I love being up before anyone else and seeing the sunrise every day, being outside with the vegetables and the sunshine.”

— Emily Henry

471. “Maybe love shouldn’t be built on a foundation of compromises, but maybe it can’t exist without them either.”

— Emily Henry

472. “Why is my mother texting me about how hot you are?”

— Emily Henry

473. “I felt so lost again. Every time I started to find my way, I seemed to slip further down. How could I trust what Gus and I have? How could I trust my own feelings? People were complicated. They weren’t math problems; they were collections of feelings and decisions and dumb luck. The world was complicated too, not a beautifully hazy French film, but a disastrous, horrible mess, speckled with brilliance and love and meaning.”

— Emily Henry

474. “The only promise you ever had in life was the one moment you were living.”

— Emily Henry

475. “Somehow, my voice comes steady and light, and not like someone reached into my rib cage and held my heart inside his hand just long enough to run a thumb across a secret wound.”

— Emily Henry

476. “It feels like there’s poison inside of me. No matter how hard I run, I can’t burn through it. For once, I wish I could cry, but I can’t.”

— Emily Henry

477. “Though it is called Spaaaahhh, which gives me pause. It’s unclear whether that’s meant to be read as a sigh or a scream.”

— Emily Henry

478. “Everyone wants a golden retriever,” he says in a low voice. As ridiculous a statement as it is, he looks serious, concerned.”

— Emily Henry

479. “Happy for now.” I tasted the words, rolled them over the back of my tongue like wine. The only promise you ever had in life was the one moment you were living. And I was. Happy for now.”

— Emily Henry

480. “When I look back up at him, he’s beaming at me, and I think, I love you more now than I ever have.”

— Emily Henry

481. “Is there anything worse than a man who thinks he’s above the laws of the social contract just because he was born with a decent face and a fat wallet?”

— Emily Henry

482. “Okay, definitely should’ve just gotten our hair cut here,” Libby says, though I silently disagree, based on the dripping-blood-style letters on the sign and the fact that they spell out Curl Up N Dye.”

— Emily Henry

483. “That is what I’m looking for every time I flip to the back of a book, compulsively checking for proof that in a life where so many things have gone wrong, there can be beauty too. That there is always hope, no matter what.”

— Emily Henry

484. “I’m afraid of you realizing I bore you.”

— Emily Henry

485. “There were thousands of times I’d thought, He is the perfect boyfriend. But once my dad was gone, and I was furious with him but also couldn’t stop missing him, I realized I’d never thought, “Jacques is so perfectly my favorite person.”

— Emily Henry

486. “It could still happen. Life’s long.”

— Emily Henry

487. “It was our beautiful life together, amazing vacations and grand gestures and freshly cut flowers in handmade vases, that had held us together for so long.”

— Emily Henry

488. “There’s that Poppy, who’s experiencing it all and having the most magical night of her life. And then there’s the one who’s already missing it, who’s watching this all happen from some point in the distance, knowing I can never go back and do it all over again.”

— Emily Henry

489. “I picked through buckets of cut flowers, longing for the days when I could afford a bundle of daisies for the kitchen, calla lilies for the nightstand in the bedroom. Of course, that had been back when Jacques and I were sharing an apartment. When you were renting in New York by yourself, there wasn’t much money for things that smelled good for a week, then died in front of you.”

— Emily Henry

490. “Or I could just stay in this bathroom, forever. I had wine; had a toilet; what else did one need?”

— Emily Henry

491. “Years later, when it’s late and I can’t sleep for the phantom ache in my chest, I pull this memory out and turn it over. I think, We did the right thing. We let each other go. That too is a kind of comfort.”

— Emily Henry

492. “Those were the endings I found solace in. The ones that said, Yes, you have lost something, but maybe, someday, you’ll find something too.”

— Emily Henry

493. “Wyn’s head droops against my shoulder, his laughter spilling across my skin, dripping down my spine, lighting up my nerve endings as it goes.”

— Emily Henry

494. “I want to enjoy it while it’s happening, not just for where it might get me eventually.”

— Emily Henry

495. “It doesn’t mean I don’t want you, January – I’ve always wanted you. It just means I also want you to be happy, and I’m scared I could never be the person who could give you that.”

— Emily Henry

496. “His mother had stayed with his father, no matter the cost, and part of that had been her son learning to hate his own name.”

— Emily Henry

497. “Gus touched the side of my face. “I don’t need snowflakes.” He kissed me. “As long as I have January.”

— Emily Henry

498. “The possibility hung in the air: at any time, one of us could have invited the other over, and either of us would have accepted. But neither of us asked, and so things went as they’d been.”

— Emily Henry

499. “Oh, no, it wasn’t a medical procedure,” I say. “It was an Etsy spell.”

— Emily Henry

500. “This is what I want for the rest of my life. To see new places. To meet new people. To try new things. I don’t feel lost or out of place here. There’s no Linfield to escape or long, boring classes to dread going back to. I’m anchored only in this moment.”

— Emily Henry