Top 500 Gabrielle Zevin Quotes (2025 Update)
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401. “So many of the mothers she knew said that their children were exactly themselves from the moment they appeared in the world. But Sadie disagreed. What person was a person without language? Tastes? Preferences? Experiences? And on the other side of childhood, what grown-up wanted to believe that they had emerged from their parents fully formed? Sadie knew that she herself had not become a person until recently. It was unreasonable to expect a child to emerge whole cloth.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

402. “When you have children, you’ll never be able to worry about a friend as much again,” Dov said.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

403. “Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture, by David Kushner;.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

404. “Los Angeles, especially when taken from a distance, was not a beautiful city, but she could will herself to be beautiful, if only for two weeks.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

405. “It’s just an absence seizure. I used to have them a lot as a kid. I rarely have them as an adult except when I’m unusually stressed.” “You should see a doctor.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

406. “I imagine people playing. Sometimes, it’s one of our games, but sometimes, it’s any game. The thing I find profoundly hopeful when I’m feeling despair is to imagine people playing, to believe that no matter how bad the world gets, there will always be players.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

407. “Hey, pretty girl. How you doing?” “Adopted,” she says.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

408. “But this was classic Sam – he had learned to tolerate the sometimes-painful present by living in the future.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

409. “There must be more to life than working and swimming and playing Go.” “The boredom you speak of,” Alabaster said. “It is what most of us call happiness.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

410. “She almost seemed to be an extension of him, and he, of her.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

411. “She knew that the presence of the timesheet made it seem as if she had an ulterior motive, though the truth was obvious to her: Sadie Green liked being praised, and Sam Masur was the best friend she had ever had.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

412. “The words you can’t find, you borrow. We read to know we’re not alone. We read because we are alone. We read and we are not alone.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

413. “The key to being a good thief, Sam always felt, was utter brazenness.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

414. “The universe, he felt, was just – or if not just, fair enough.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

415. “As Sam often said to Sadie, “Why make anything if you don’t believe it could be great?”

— Gabrielle Zevin

416. “Alice would only have to be in the hospital for two nights this time, and it was only out of, according to her mother, “an abundance of caution.” It reminded her of a murder of crows, a flock of seagulls, a pack of wolves. She imagined that “caution” was a creature of some kind – maybe, a cross between a Saint Bernard and an elephant. A large, intelligent, friendly animal that could be counted on to defend the Green sisters from threats, existential and otherwise.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

417. “To allow yourself to play with another person is no small risk. It means allowing yourself to be open, to be exposed, to be hurt.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

418. “I love you, Sadie,” Sam said. “I know, Sam. I love you, too.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

419. “Puedes tomar prestadas las palabras que no encuentras.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

420. “A name is destiny, if you think it is.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

421. “Alice was clever, but she had the kind of cleverness that verged on the unkind, and this had only gotten worse in the years since she had been diagnosed with leukemia. Sadie didn’t want Sam viewed through her sister’s acute and often unforgiving lens.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

422. “No, this is a great game. That’s Cobainus. The eleven stars of Cobainus form a fuzzy grandma sweater,” Marx said.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

423. “The detail of Macbeth throwing dinner rolls at Banquo’s empty chair comes from the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 2018 production of Macbeth, directed by Polly Findlay and starring Christopher Eccleston in the title role.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

424. “I’ve been blue, lately,” Sam admitted. “And I wondered, how do you get over that sort of thing?” “Work helps,” Sadie said. “Games help. But sometimes, when I’m really low, I keep a particular image in my mind.” “What is it?” “I imagine people playing. Sometimes, it’s one of our games, but sometimes, it’s any game. The thing I find profoundly hopeful when I’m feeling despair is to imagine people playing, to believe that no matter how bad the world gets, there will always be players.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

425. “On the third day, he brought a library copy of the novel Galatea 2.2, which he had recently enjoyed.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

426. “What is a ‘programmer’?” Emily asked. “A programmer is a diviner of possible outcomes, and a seer of unseen worlds.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

427. “A good man is hard to find,” she says finally. “Do you mean the O’Connor story? The one on your desk. It’s an awfully dark thing to bring up at a time like this.” “No, I mean you. I’ve been looking forever. It was only two trains and a boat away.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

428. “Sam was leaning on his good foot, in the increasingly lopsided way he had to stand, and Sadie felt a swelling of love and of worry for him – what was the difference in the end? It was never worth worrying about someone you didn’t love. And it wasn’t love if you didn’t worry.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

429. “But life was always arriving. There was always another gate to pass through.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

430. “Click on this word, he thought, and you will find links to everything it means. Because you are my oldest friend. Because once, when I was at my lowest, you saved me. Because I might have died without you or ended up in a children’s psychiatric hospital. Because I owe you. Because, selfishly, I see a future where we make fantastic games together, if you can manage to get out of bed.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

431. “There are people like you and like me. We have bad things happen to us, and we survive them. We are sturdy. But with people like your friend, you must be exceptionally gentle, or they may break.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

432. “I love you,” Daedalus said. “It is hard for me to say, because sometimes it doesn’t seem like it is enough.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

433. “They had become instant best friends in the way people can in their twenties.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

434. “Why wouldn’t you tell someone you loved them? Once you love someone, you repeated it until they were tired of hearing it.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

435. “While Sadie experienced this period of indecision as stressful, Sam didn’t feel that way at all. The best part of this moment, he thought, is that everything is still possible.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

436. “It’s more than romantic. It’s better than romance It’s friendship.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

437. “Why was it so hard for him to say he loved her even when she said it to him? He knew he loved her. People who felt far less for each other said “love” all the time, and it didn’t mean a thing. And maybe that was the point. He more than loved Sadie Green. There needed to be another word for it.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

438. “We are not quite novels. The analogy he is looking for is almost there. We are not quite short stories. At this point, his life is seeming closest to that. In the end, we are collected works. He has read enough to know there are no collections where each story is perfect. Some hits. Some misses. If you’re lucky, a standout. And in the end, people only really remember the standouts anyway, and they don’t remember those for very long.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

439. “Maybe this is selfish, but I don’t want to love more than I am loved. And I don’t want to be with someone who loves something or someone more than me.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

440. “He was no longer the boy who wanted to taste everything at the buffet, and he considered it a sign of his own maturity that he had not thought to end things with Zoe. But his disdain for his former itinerancy had made it so he could not recognize the reasons a person should stay.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

441. “They say success kills relationships, but the lack of it will do it just as quickly.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

442. “How much of your life had been a roll of the big polyhedral die in the sky?”

— Gabrielle Zevin

443. “Visto che siamo al mondo, stiamo tutti morendo.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

444. “He would know her handwriting anywhere.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

445. “Like Sam, I once lived in a house up a hill from the Happy Foot Sad Foot sign. The Happy Foot Sad Foot sign was taken down in 2019, but I am told you can still find its remains in a gift shop somewhere in Silver Lake.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

446. “But the best thing Marx did for them was this: He believed in them.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

447. “No somos las cosas que acumulamos, adquirimos, leemos. Durante el tiempo que nos es dado vivir, somos solo amor. Las cosas que hemos amado. Las personas que hemos amado. Eso, es lo que realmente perdura.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

448. “Sadie,” he said. “Do you know why I want to make a game?” “Of course. Because you foolishly think it will make you rich and famous.” “No. It’s very simple. I want to make something that will make people happy.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

449. “There was the life that you lived, which consisted of the choices you made. And then, there was the other life, the one that was the things you hadn’t chosen.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

450. “I am so tired of your crap. Do you honestly think you suffer more than everyone else? Do you think you suffer more than I do? Do you think you’re the first person to ever have a baby? Or lose someone? Do you think you’re some goddamned pioneer when it comes to grief?”

— Gabrielle Zevin