Top 35 Holly Smale Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “You need to stop caring what people who don’t matter think of you. Be who you are and let everybody else be who they are. Differences are a good thing.”

— Holly Smale

2. “Because here’s the thing about a book: when you pick up a story, you put down your own.”

— Holly Smale

3. “I’m so tired of it all. I’m tired of not fitting in; of being left out; of being hated. I’m tired of having everything I am ripped up and strewn around the room the way a puppy wrecks an abandoned toilet roll. I’m tired of never doing anything right; of constantly being humiliated; of feeling like I’m just not good enough, no matter what I do. I’m tired of feeling like this. And most of all, I’m tired of being a polar bear, wandering around the rainforest on my own.”

— Holly Smale

4. “There’s a humpback whale in the ocean that sings at fifty-two hertz: too low for any other whale to hear. Scientists aren’t sure if it’s a genetic anomaly, or a sole survivor of an extinct species, or just a whale who accidentally learnt the wrong song. They just know that it’s probably the loneliest mammal on earth.”

— Holly Smale

5. “And this way, l’ll leave everything behind before it gets the chance to do the same to me.”

— Holly Smale

6. “Why do you always rescue me?” – “Every Cinderella needs a fairy godmother. But sometimes your fairy godmother needs you right back.”

— Holly Smale

7. “We don’t unfold ourselves like pieces of paper for everyone to see: that’s not how humans work. There are always parts of us we shut away or hide. Bits of ourselves we can’t touch because they’re too precious and buried too deep. Fragments of truth we barely admit to ourselves. Because sometimes editing our own story is the only way to get through it.”

— Holly Smale

8. “My Best Friend and I have spent plenty of time together, despite me being in my First Ever Relationship. This is because friends should always come first.”

— Holly Smale

9. “It feels like we’re living in a time where neurodivergence is more broadly understood, or even accepted – with people, learning about the ways conditions like Autism and ADHD have historically been underdiagnosed, or underreported, especially in women.”

— Holly Smale

10. “They say that life is just a blank chain, and precious moments are the beads we hang off it to make it beautiful.”

— Holly Smale

11. “You know, I’ve worked out that if I lived on Mercury I’d be sixty-six years old tomorrow. I’d be twenty-six on Venus, and half a year old on Saturn. I’m only sixteen because I’m on this planet.”

— Holly Smale

12. “She’s probably so mesmerized by her own beauty she can’t move away from the mirror,” I hear Wilbur stage-whisper. “It’s why I’m always late.” Then he knocks on the door as well. “Look away from the reflection, baby,” he shouts through the wood. “Just look away and the spell will be broken.”

— Holly Smale

13. “That’s the beauty of the summer holidays. It’s as if life is just a big Etch-a-Sketch, and once a year you get to shake it vigorously up and down and start again.”

— Holly Smale

14. “Never underestimate the power of a well-placed apostrophe.”

— Holly Smale

15. “There are infinite things you can do with time. You can save it, spend it, stitch it, kill it. You can beat it, steal it and watch it fly. You can do time and set it; you can waste it and keep it; it can be good or bad, on your side or against you. You can have a whale of it; be in the nick of it or behind it; you can have it on your hands.”

— Holly Smale

16. “Scientist say that music can change the speed of a heartbeat. They failed to add: so can a text message.”

— Holly Smale

17. “I’m slowly beginning to realise how ironic it is that I’m so good at learning lessons inside school, and so terrible at learning any outside it.”

— Holly Smale

18. “I can change my plans. But I can’t change my family.”

— Holly Smale

19. “Memories are time travel, and so are regrets, hopes and day-dreams.”

— Holly Smale

20. “People like their high-fashion models to look as deeply unhappy as physically possible You can’t have beauty and contentment: it would just be unfair.”

— Holly Smale

21. “I’ve fought dragons, attended balls and chased a whale. I’ve won wars, lost court cases, travelled India, ridden broomsticks and stranded myself on numerous islands. I’ve died a dozen times. Because here’s the thing about a book: when you pick up a story, you put down your own.”

— Holly Smale

22. “My impact on hearts is like an earthquake happening on the other side of the world: if I’m lucky, I can hope for a teacup tinkling in its saucer. And even then it’s a bit of a surprise and everybody talks about it afterward.”

— Holly Smale

23. “Because it’s not the walking away from love that’s the hard part: it’s the falling in. It’s losing yourself to it and not knowing who you are without it. It’s needing somebody else more than you need yourself. It’s being happier with them than you are on your own.”

— Holly Smale

24. “As if I’m constantly being asked to share, to reveal myself, to open up, and when I do – when I finally show people who I truly am – it’s not what anyone wanted and they explode right in front of me.”

— Holly Smale

25. “Because falling in love doesn’t have to mean dropping your best friend in the process.”

— Holly Smale

26. “I get caught up with trying to read all the music around me, instead of one note inside myself.”

— Holly Smale

27. “They say fiction is the closest well ever get from magic. Open a book and an entire world will pop out and it doesn’t matter if it’s dragons or Victorian children or wizards. You are immediately someone else and somewhere else.”

— Holly Smale

28. “Did you know that the chances of being in a plane crash are less than 0.00001 per cent? That means that you’re more likely to be killed by a donkey or to naturally conceive identical quadruplets.” Bunty.”

— Holly Smale

29. “I loved all of this boy: the good bits and the bad. And I knew that, when it came, I would love his sadness too.”

— Holly Smale

30. “Where does a story end? It’s a lie. The last page of a book, because it masquerades as a conclusion... But life isn’t like that, so books are dishonest. Maybe that’s why humans like them.”

— Holly Smale

31. “The sad fact is, there are 7.220.400.641 people on the planet, but right now I haven’t got a single one to talk to.”

— Holly Smale

32. “They say fiction is the closest we ever get to magic. Forget top hats and rabbits: open a book and an entire world will pop out. And it doesn’t matter if it’s dragons or Victorian orphans or wizards. You are immediately somewhere else and someone else. Transported. It’s not like that with textbooks.”

— Holly Smale

33. “Humans are supposed to have 70,000 thoughts a day.”

— Holly Smale

34. “The full truth is not easy or comfortable; it is often far safer to construct an alternative that keeps everyone happy instead.”

— Holly Smale

35. “I can only conclude that her feelings toward me are very similar to what I’ve read about love: passionate, random, inexplicable, and totally uncontrollable. She can’t help hating me any more than Heathcliff could help loving Cathy. It’s simply written in the stars. Which would be quite sweet if she wasn’t such a cow all the time.”

— Holly Smale

36. “Ideally, I’d be paid money to sit in a dimly lit room, reading and talking to nobody. Apart from maybe on the rare occasion where I’m wheeled out to talk at someone about something I’m interested in, and everybody is forced to listen but not allowed to respond.”

— Holly Smale

37. “Apparently humans share fifty per cent of their DNA with bananas. My father is a constant reminder of that.”

— Holly Smale

38. “There are 7,123,024,873 people in the world, and nick keeps choosing me.”

— Holly Smale

39. “Books are the best way to engage in other worlds. You can escape the one you’re in.”

— Holly Smale