Top 140 Helen Hoang Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Tough love is brutally honest and hurts you to help you. Tough love cuts you when you’re already bruised and berates you when you don’t heal faster.”

— Helen Hoang

2. “She needed to get ready for bed, but first, she wanted to do nothing for a few moments. Just nothing. Nothing was such a luxury.”

— Helen Hoang

3. “I’d like you to watch what you’re doing and saying, and if it’s something that doesn’t feel right and true to who you are, if it’s something that exhausts you or makes you unhappy, take a look at why you are doing it. And if there isn’t a good reason... try not doing it.”

— Helen Hoang

4. “Self-pity is not an indulgence that I allow myself. This doesn’t feel like pity, though. It feels like self-compassion, and the realization makes me cry harder.”

— Helen Hoang

5. “For that’s the only place where true perfection exists – the blank page. Nothing I actually do can compete with the boundless potential of what I could do. But if I allow the fear of imperfection to trap me in perpetual beginnings, I’ll never create anything again.”

— Helen Hoang

6. “I love you, Anna,” she whispers fiercely. “No matter what happens, I hope you know that. Fight with your sister if you must, but I stay in your life. Talk to me, tell me when things are wrong, and I’ll do my best. I can’t lose you.”

— Helen Hoang

7. “Michael was mint chocolate chip for her. She could try other flavors, but he’d always be her favorite.”

— Helen Hoang

8. “When you love someone, you fight for them in every way you know how.”

— Helen Hoang

9. “She had a disorder, but it didn’t define her. She was Stella. She was a unique person.”

— Helen Hoang

10. “The only good thing this broken heart of mine can feel is love for you.”

— Helen Hoang

11. “It’s not winning the race that’s important. It’s this moment right here, when I’m lying in the mud staring up at the dark sky with rain falling in my eyes. It’s facing the pain, facing failure, facing myself, and finding a way to make it to the end.”

— Helen Hoang

12. “As a society, we need to have compassion for all people affected by illness and disability – and that means those who receive care as well as those who give care. We all matter, and no one should feel like they can’t ask for help when they need it. If someone says they’re hurting, please listen. Please take them seriously. Please be kind. If you’re hurting, please be kind to yourself.”

— Helen Hoang

13. “Non aveva bisogno delle persone. Lei era felicissima quando aveva spazio e tempo per focalizzarsi sulle cose che le interessavano.”

— Helen Hoang

14. “When her mother got something into her mind, she was like a honey badger with a vendetta – pugnacious and tenacious, but with the snarling and fur.”

— Helen Hoang

15. “Warm. Content. Safe in his arms. Him safe in hers. She hugged him tighter. He was bigger and stronger, but she would protect him with everything she had.”

— Helen Hoang

16. “I don’t have a fight-or-flight instinct. I have a freeze instinct.”

— Helen Hoang

17. “She still shared a bed with him, but she kept her back to him and balanced on the very edge, as far away from him as possible. Sometimes, he worried she’d fall off. Other times, he hoped she’d fall off. So he’d have an excuse to tell her to come closer.”

— Helen Hoang

18. “Lips to lips, hearts melting together, no distance between them, not even an arm’s length.”

— Helen Hoang

19. “Love, he found, was a jail. It trapped, and it clipped wings. It dragged you down, forced you to places you didn’t want to go.”

— Helen Hoang

20. “You’re wet already, Stella. You’re like a Lamborghini. Zero to sixty in two point seven seconds.”

— Helen Hoang

21. “Just because something isn’t perfect doesn’t mean we need to throw it away.”

— Helen Hoang

22. “I see, and for the first time in my adult life, I don’t care that I’m making a scene. I haven’t hurt anyone. I shouldn’t be ashamed. I shouldn’t need to apologize. This is me.”

— Helen Hoang

23. “So beautiful. And here. She’d come to find him again. No one ever looked for him. They all knew he wanted to be alone. Except it wasn’t always that way. Sometimes he was alone out of habit. Sometimes it took effort to distract himself from the growing emptiness inside.”

— Helen Hoang

24. “She wasn’t good at lying, but she knew how to pretend she was okay.”

— Helen Hoang

25. “I have trouble focusing enough to read anything of significant length, so I find my way to poetry.”

— Helen Hoang

26. “A poem can be as short as two lines, sometimes even one, but there’s an entire idea contained there, an entire story.”

— Helen Hoang

27. “How did one not obsess over something wonderful? How did one like something a reasonable amount?”

— Helen Hoang

28. “He never minds. Even when they throw themselves at him. You should have seen the last one. She asked him out to dinner, and he said, ‘No, thanks, I already ate.’ ‘Dessert then?’ ‘No, I don’t eat dessert after class.’ ‘Coffee?’ ‘That will keep me up, and I have work tomorrow.”

— Helen Hoang

29. “I’ve missed you.” So badly his body had broken down. “I need to know you’re safe and happy. And I want you close. With me.”

— Helen Hoang

30. “I’m thinking I need to switch apps or narrow my search criteria when I come across Anna. Her picture is so sweet that I almost skip her on principle, but I keep looking because I can’t help myself.”

— Helen Hoang

31. “Her lips curved like she was telling him a secret. About math things.”

— Helen Hoang

32. “All I can do is go forward, and to do that, I must stop chasing perfection. It doesn’t exist. I can never please everyone. It’s hard enough just pleasing myself. Instead, I must focus on giving what I have, not what people want, because that is all I can give.”

— Helen Hoang

33. “She had that fire. She felt it. That was her worth. That was her value. She would fight for her loved ones. And she would fight for herself. Because she mattered.”

— Helen Hoang

34. “Anna’s pain is real. I can’t brush it aside just because I don’t understand it. I can’t place judgment on it. Pain is pain.”

— Helen Hoang

35. “For that’s the only place where true perfection exists – the blank page. Nothing I actually do can compete with the boundless potential of what I could do.”

— Helen Hoang

36. “I don’t want just a night or a week or a month with you. I want you all the time. I like you better than calculus, and math is the only thing that unites the universe.”

— Helen Hoang

37. “Trovava che l’amore fosse un carcere. Intrappolava e tarpava le ali. Trascinava in un baratro, imponeva luoghi in cui non si voleva andare...”

— Helen Hoang

38. “Yes, she was lonely. Yes, she had a broken heart. But at least she had herself.”

— Helen Hoang

39. “How much of what people say is genuine and how much is politeness? Is anyone really living their life or are we all reading lines from a giant script written by other people?”

— Helen Hoang

40. “Everything about him pleased her. Not just his looks, but his patience and his kindness. He was good. He was an obsession waiting to happen.”

— Helen Hoang

41. “Show me how to make it good for you, too,” he said as he looked at her directly, no trace of shame on his face. “Because I need you to feel the way I do right now.”

— Helen Hoang

42. “It’s like pricking yourself with a needle. Do it once, and you’re okay. You can ignore that it even happened. Prick yourself repeatedly without giving yourself time to heal, and soon you’re injured and bleeding.”

— Helen Hoang

43. “She was a bloodthirsty villainess.”

— Helen Hoang

44. “But big life events change people, and the truth is I’m different now.”

— Helen Hoang

45. “She ached so badly to be held it felt like a sickness had invaded her muscles and bones.”

— Helen Hoang

46. “The harmless little lies that make people feel nice. They’re essential for getting along in society.”

— Helen Hoang

47. “So she could speak English. She just chose not to. With him.”

— Helen Hoang

48. “My heart works in a different way, but it’s yours. You’re my one.”

— Helen Hoang

49. “Smiles are real when they reach your eyes.”

— Helen Hoang

50. “He was ignoring everyone, including her, at this expensive wedding, so he could read a novel about alien demon things.”

— Helen Hoang