Top 120 Holly Bourne Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “Life doesn’t always have to be about changing the world. Sometimes it’s about living your life for you. Trying to find some happiness, completely selfishly, but just for you.”

— Holly Bourne

52. “Be you. It’s all you can ever be anyway. But own being you. It’s a fab thing to own.”

— Holly Bourne

53. “Because trying to use logic to explain anxiety is like using a banana to open a locked safe.”

— Holly Bourne

54. “Though the world was hazy, all I could think about was love. And how I’d never had it. How I would never understand what it felt like to fall asleep knowing another person was thinking of you. I would never have someone touch the small of my back as they steered me through a crowd. I would never know the contour of someone’s face off-by-heart, and yet not be bored with it. And, as I sank to the grey, chewing-gum stained carpet, all I could think was how sad that was.”

— Holly Bourne

55. “Love, as always, is what it comes down to. You have to love. It’s the only way. Love for life. Love for others. And, most importantly, love for yourself.”

— Holly Bourne

56. “Yes. I thought maybe our relationship was different. Maybe it was, for a little while. But I’m not giving you the opportunity to break my heart again, Harry. Maybe this time you’ve broken your own too, and maybe you won’t do anything like this again. I’m not willing to take that chance though.”

— Holly Bourne

57. “I didn’t really have any sharable anecdotes. That’s the thing about anxiety – it limits your experiences so the only stories you have to tell are the “I went mad” ones.”

— Holly Bourne

58. “Romance films are money-spinning cathedrals of love, wobbling in the foundations of unbelievable and damaging stereotypes.”

— Holly Bourne

59. “I have a sudden need to take a shower. A really long shower, scraping my skin clean until it is red raw.”

— Holly Bourne

60. “You never know if happy memories are going to become sad ones. They glow and shine in the vast realms of our subconscious, making that part of our brain feel like it’s filled with glitter. We pick them up and cradle them like expensive cats, or wriggle into them like they are jumpers we’ve left to warm on a radiator. Until the day when, for one reason or another, life can suddenly make this happy memory into a sad memory instead. Good memories exist in the naivety of not knowing any better.”

— Holly Bourne

61. “Maybe with enough time passed, pain can be something that you remember fondly because you’re so sure that particular pain has healed.”

— Holly Bourne

62. “Jane simpered and curled herself back around Joel, like he’d said something romantic rather than creepy and sinister.”

— Holly Bourne

63. “Smiling is sometimes the only way to stop yourself from crying.”

— Holly Bourne

64. “I mean, he’s a YORKSHIREMAN. There isn’t any problem that can’t be solved by pretending it doesn’t exist and having a cup of tea.”

— Holly Bourne

65. “I want to change things on my own terms, to show that there’s no right or wrong way to change the world. There’s no entry test. You don’t need to suck anything up. Pay any dues. Just you and your anger and your voice is enough. If you only have the courage to use it.”

— Holly Bourne

66. “It was like I’d climbed Everest, had the summit in my sight, the flag in my hand, all ready to pierce it into the top of the mountain and say, “Whoopdedoo, I made it,” and then an avalanche from out of nowhere swept me right back to the bottom of the mountain again. Was it worth bothering to try and climb it again? I was exhausted. I’d already climbed it. I didn’t want to... but, then, what other choice was there?”

— Holly Bourne

67. “The only love affair I needed to invest in right now was one with myself. Spend some time with me. Figuring out myself and why I picked the relationships I did. I was holding out my heart to me. Because I’d realised I was the only person who could give me a happily-ever-after.”

— Holly Bourne

68. “I’ve used up so many tears on you already, and it’s not helping me get over this any better.”

— Holly Bourne

69. “That’s the thing about love. However you have it, however you’ve had it – it never goes. Once it’s touched you, it’s touched you forever. You’ll be permanently scarred by its brilliance. You can walk through the rest of your life with that wonderful knowledge... Someone once loved me and it was beautiful. No one can take that away from you.”

— Holly Bourne

70. “There was a smell, a musty one that made you feel smarter and the need to talk quietly.”

— Holly Bourne

71. “Do you ever worry you’re being a teenager wrong?” I thought of the last three years. “I KNOW I’m being one wrong.” “I mean, what’s wrong with finding songs glorifying domestic violence offensive? What’s wrong with finding live music too loud? What’s wrong with a nice cup of tea and a chat?”

— Holly Bourne

72. “I love the men who don’t need sisters and daughters and wives to make us human and not want us hurt.”

— Holly Bourne

73. “But I was choosing to walk away from that. Because my heart... my heart was too fragile for someone who had chosen to break it.”

— Holly Bourne

74. “So you gotta fight for your right to be ruddy miserable.”

— Holly Bourne

75. “Be someone you would want to read about.”

— Holly Bourne

76. “It was immediately obvious that Harry had hints of fuckboy about him.”

— Holly Bourne

77. “It’s easy to fall in love when you’re young and the sun is shining and you feel like the world is just there to have an argument with, with someone you adore by your side. But then life happens, and you start fighting against them, rather than with them... You should always pick someone who’s on your side, Amber. It’s too hard to be fighting the world and the person you love.”

— Holly Bourne

78. “Reality doesn’t wait for you to be ready for it. It doesn’t go away when you tell it to. It’s like a persistent mosquito, determined to suck your blood and leave you with a bumpy itch that you can’t stop scratching.”

— Holly Bourne

79. “Soon my sobs dulled to a whimper. Soon my breathing came back. Soon I was able to get off the carpet. Soon I’d meet my friends for college and pretend it hadn’t happened.”

— Holly Bourne

80. “It’s not fair to set people tests and then get annoyed when they fail them.”

— Holly Bourne

81. “I mean, if I want to kiss someone, it’s like fighting an addiction not getting to kiss them.”

— Holly Bourne

82. “Maybe there in a set amount of crying your body needs to deal with any trauma. There’s a certain water-level of tears you need to shed until you can find acceptance or move on or whatever. And, if you don’t cry them out, they just catch up with you.”

— Holly Bourne

83. “Guilt is the luxury of the powerful.”

— Holly Bourne

84. “Do you think maybe your writing isn’t going anymore because you’re unhappy? Because you’re not living the life you could? A life worth writing about? You must know that cliche-write what you know-but what do you know, Bree, when you shut the world out?”

— Holly Bourne

85. “Failure is never getting hurt. Because that means you’ve not done anything you cared about.”

— Holly Bourne

86. “I think real kindness, real compassion, is having the strength to stop and try and see where another person is coming from. To try and work out why they’re being the way they’re being. It takes time and patience. It’s not easy, but that’s real kindness.”

— Holly Bourne

87. “I’d been playing a game that was impossible to win. For a prize that didn’t exist.”

— Holly Bourne

88. “It takes guts to listen to our gut...”

— Holly Bourne

89. “Because there’s nothing more comforting than someone who actually gets it. Really gets it. Because they’ve been to the same hell as you have and can verify you’ve not made it up.”

— Holly Bourne

90. “So many people behave like they think a cinema orchestra is following them around to give them backing music, that they’re the superstar of the universe... and the people who believe this way, they’re the people who tend to hurt others the most. They think they’re the hero of their own story, but, actually, in the pursuit of being so important, they’re often the villain of everyone else’s.”

— Holly Bourne

91. “It’s not going to be easy. But then interesting things never are, are they?”

— Holly Bourne

92. “Being interesting isn’t important. But being happy is. As well as being a person you’re proud of.”

— Holly Bourne

93. “Sometimes that’s all you can do in life, when it comes to pain – try and understand it. We all carry scars and scorch marks around with us. We cuddle up each night with ghosts of damaging memories – we let them swirl around our heads, never able to settle or heal because we can’t make sense of this terrible thing that happened to us, and why we’re finding it so impossible to get over. You can’t force pain to leave until it’s ready to.”

— Holly Bourne

94. “What I couldn’t handle wasn’t the dropping of me as a friend – although that stung like an African Killer Bee – but the selling out of who-you-are and what’s-important-to-you just because a boy likes it. To me that made you a traitor against girl kind... against yourself.”

— Holly Bourne

95. “We need to kill with kindness. Cure with compassion.”

— Holly Bourne

96. “Being a woman, in this world, ultimately makes you crazy.”

— Holly Bourne

97. “All I’m saying is, love changes over time. No person is ever perfect for another person.”

— Holly Bourne

98. “It was true at the time. But time changes the truth.”

— Holly Bourne

99. “His heart had changed channels, even though our show was still playing.”

— Holly Bourne

100. “That can’t be possible.”

— Holly Bourne