Top 60 Holly Goldberg Sloan Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The ability to keep your mouth shut is usually a sign of intelligence.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

2. “I’ll be ready. I’m not sure for what exactly. But maybe that’s what being ready really means.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

3. “For someone grieving, moving forward is the challenge. Because after extreme loss, you want to go back.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

4. “What we expect rarely occurs; what we don’t expect is what happens.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

5. “If you’re lost, you might need to swim against the tide.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

6. “Dysphagia is the medical term for not being able to swallow, and I know that there are two kinds of dysphagia: oropharyngeal and esophageal. But maybe there is also a third kind of dysphagia that comes when your heart breaks into pieces. I can’t swallow because I have that kind.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

7. “A second can feel like forever if what follows is heartbreak.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

8. “All reality is a blender where hopes and dreams are mixed with fear and despair.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

9. “And just being there is ninety-nine percent of what matters when your world falls apart.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

10. “Endings are always the beginnings of something else.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

11. “When you care about other people, it takes the spotlight off your own drama.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

12. “This is why the deepest form of pain comes out as silence.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

13. “It has been my experience that rewarding and heartbreaking often go hand in hand.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

14. “I cut all my words out. My heart was too full of them.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

15. “I somehow make it through the first month. I dress and brush my teeth when they tell me to. And I experience the hollow feeling of complete loss, which is emptiness.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

16. “Even if free things are never free. The burden of ownership means everything has a price.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

17. “I don’t want to know how you did it. I want to believe you are magic.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

18. “The trains full of the Strange ran on time.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

19. “I force myself to think of anything but the one thing that I’m actually always thinking about. And that is so exhausting that I sleep more than I ever have.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

20. “Connectedness. One thing leads to another. Often in unexpected ways.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

21. “I’m not brave; it’s just that all other choices have been thrown out the window.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

22. “A genius shoots at something no one else can see, and hits it.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

23. “Appleblossom can’t believe the taste of the dark square. Is tehre a way to describe this morsel of goodness? It is so sweet adn smooth. It makes a green snail seem like an old pinecone seed, and every possum knows that a green snail is fantastic eating.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

24. “I usually found so-called “small talk” boring. I like “large talk”, which is more about theories and concepts, mixed with facts and known quantities.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

25. “Maybe the key is that Big Ideas are Little Ideas but told in Big Ways?”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

26. “You don’t have to watch many wildlife documentaries to know that the herd doesn’t accept the lone straggler.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

27. “It was ironic that the kids who didn’t go to school would be punished with the threat of being kicked out.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

28. “A leader organizes people whether they know it or not.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

29. “A guy named Otto Sayas – I would give anything to have a name that was a palindrome – knocks.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

30. “Only in cartoons and fairy tales and greeting cards do endings have glitter.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

31. “Maybe you don’t need to speak to be heard. Because I don’t remember silence being so loud before.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

32. “It would be sad to be hired as a caregiver and then die before the person you were looking after. You wouldn’t be able to let people know you did a good job.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

33. “You and I are now the Romeo and Juliet of friendships. Only we’re the Juliet and Juliet.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

34. “Because in my opinion it’s not really a great idea to see people as one thing. Every person has lots of ingredients to make them into what is always a one-of-a-kind creation.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

35. “She said they needed to put down a real root system to achieve their potential.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

36. “People usually find a good place for stray dogs, or for the elderly when they can no longer go up stairs or use a can opener. Finding a good place for a kid seems like a much bigger challenge.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

37. “I feel moved because they aren’t treating me like I’ll break into a million pieces.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

38. “He couldn’t throw things away because he had trouble figuring out what had value and what didn’t. Plus he liked the comfort of possessions. If he couldn’t belong to something, at least something belonged to him.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

39. “Teenage boys are so easily amused.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

40. “For him and his brother, he now knew, that music was real. Becuase all you had to do, really, was be willing to use your imagination. And listen.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

41. “Who wants a seat at my pity party?”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

42. “Gay people having families doesn’t seem like something anyone should have to shout about anymore. Some people are a lot more interested in raising kids than other people. From what I can see, the person most interested usually does the best job” -Bett.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

43. “Each blossom held it’s own unique possibility.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

44. “Because after extreme loss, you want to go back.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

45. “I have seen trees that survive fire. Their bark is burned and their limbs are dead branches. But hidden under that skeleton is a force that sends a single shoot of green out into the world.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

46. “No one’s supposed to tell anyone, “You two shouldn’t love each other.” But maybe, also, no one’s supposed to tell anyone, “You two should love each other.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

47. “My goals for this summer, if I had goals, would be to not worry about my height and also to find new ways to be happy now that Ramon is gone.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

48. “Dell no longer ate meat loaf. He.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

49. “I will see only what I want to see. It’s possible that’s how people get through crisis. The world where we live is so much in our head.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

50. “Hadn’t someone once said love was attention? No more, no less. There was attention, and there was obsession, and there was possession.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan