Top 120 Holly Bourne Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “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

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

— Holly Bourne

53. “What people don’t understand about feeling such potent sadness is, when it lifts, it really lets you know what happiness means.”

— Holly Bourne

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

— Holly Bourne

55. “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

56. “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

57. “Nobody really likes coffee. They just pretend to because drinking coffee makes them feel like a proper adult.”

— Holly Bourne

58. “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

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

— Holly Bourne

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

— Holly Bourne

61. “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

62. “Crying is a very obvious sign that something isn’t going right in your life. You should not ignore tears.”

— Holly Bourne

63. “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

64. “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

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

— Holly Bourne

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

— Holly Bourne

67. “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

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

— Holly Bourne

69. “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

70. “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

71. “It’s such a simple torture – the silent treatment. As basic as tripping someone over or pulling their chair out before they sit down. And yet it’s so very effective. When someone has the willpower to pretend you’re not there, it nullifies you. How do you fight against that humiliation?”

— Holly Bourne

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

— Holly Bourne

73. “My life is so crap that i cant even think of ten stupid things that can give me reason not to be miserable.”

— Holly Bourne

74. “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

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

— Holly Bourne

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

— Holly Bourne

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

— Holly Bourne

78. “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

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

— Holly Bourne

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

— Holly Bourne

81. “People always believe they’re nice in their own heads, that’s what makes it so scary when you look at the state of the world.”

— Holly Bourne

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

— Holly Bourne

83. “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

84. “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

85. “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

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

— Holly Bourne

87. “Happy endings are reserved strictly for the fiction shelves of bookstores.”

— Holly Bourne

88. “I don’t know. How are you supposed to know? Why can’t God come down from the sky with a giant foam finger, point at some bloke, and say, “That one, Evie, you’re supposed to fall in love with that one. He’s not a douche, I checked for you.”

— Holly Bourne

89. “Yes, well, rein it in, Prom King. British people have been successfully repressing our emotions since before your country was even a thing.” We.”

— Holly Bourne

90. “It hadn’t felt safe. Then I told my story, and now I did.”

— Holly Bourne

91. “I hoped he wasn’t a secret chauvinist.”

— Holly Bourne

92. “What was the point? What is the point in love, and promises of it, when it can just jump from one person to another like that?”

— Holly Bourne

93. “Ha, that’s the problem. You have to exert brain control in order to do it, and isn’t a lack of control over your brain why you’re in therapy in the first place?”

— Holly Bourne

94. “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

95. “I’m conscious of laughing attractively, so when the photo goes up on the website in two months’ time, people will think I look pretty. Even though they’ll probably only scroll past to see what they look like, I must still look pretty.”

— Holly Bourne

96. “I don’t need to know whether or not we are capable of magic. Because learning to love yourself, and finding people who love yourself too, that’s the real magic.”

— Holly Bourne

97. “Is any broken heart ever worth it?”

— Holly Bourne

98. “Guts and hearts aren’t always the most compatible – I’m starting to learn that. They pull in different directions, ignoring one another when they really shouldn’t.”

— Holly Bourne

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

— Holly Bourne

100. “Because the week the cinema closed? Well. That was the week we broke up. Ahh, come on. You knew this was coming.”

— Holly Bourne