Top 100 Jane Green Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “You must work to live, not live to work.”

— Jane Green

2. “The definition of insanity is doing what you’ve always done and expecting different results.”

— Jane Green

3. “The best things in life always find us when we’re not looking for them.”

— Jane Green

4. “Nothing in this world happens without a reason. That we are all exactly where we are supposed to be, and that the pieces of the puzzle have a tendency to come together when you least expect it.”

— Jane Green

5. “The key to happiness is not getting what you want but wanting what you get.”

— Jane Green

6. “People show you who they are, not by what they say, but by what they do.”

— Jane Green

7. “Sometimes in life, you have to make things happen. That you can change your life if you’re willing to let go of the old and actively look for the new. That even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”

— Jane Green

8. “Bad things always happen in three.”

— Jane Green

9. “I am divorced, and one of the things I am tremendously grateful for is that my ex-husband and I made a decision to go through mediation. I knew a trial would drag on for years, would cost me everything, but worse, would be devastating for our four small children.”

— Jane Green

10. “I am not a people pleaser. I am not a person who says things because she thinks it will make the other person happy, nor am I a person who offers things she cannot deliver because I want the other person to like me.”

— Jane Green

11. “And then there was him, the long and painful love of her life.”

— Jane Green

12. “When I’m single, I’m this fabulous, independent, confident woman, and then I get involved with one disastrous man after another and I turn into this needy, insecure, fearful girl who becomes frightened of her own shadow.”

— Jane Green

13. “Anyone can live in a house, but homes are created with patience, time and love.”

— Jane Green

14. “Life, Steffi has learned, carries on around the pain, making room for it, absorbing it until it becomes part of the daily fabric, wrapping itself around you and lodging itself in your heart.”

— Jane Green

15. “Covers, so many covers, so many different, delectable pictures, and although, metaphorically speaking, it is the thing I hate most, when it comes to literature I always judge books by their covers. First the cover will catch my eye, then I read the back of the book, and then finally the first page.”

— Jane Green

16. “When people show you who they are, believe them.”

— Jane Green

17. “You are the best person I’ve met in years, and if I’d met you in a year’s time, or maybe even a few months, I know we could be happy together, but I can’t give you what you need.”

— Jane Green

18. “It just feels surreal. Every now and then it kind of hits me, but only for a short while, and then it carries on feeling like it didn’t really happen, that he’s going to walk in this evening and sit in front of the set drinking beer.”

— Jane Green

19. “It’s all well and good saying you avoid pain by avoiding relationships, but what about the wonderful things you’re avoiding as well? What about the joy and the intimacy and the trust that come with finding someone you love?”

— Jane Green

20. “I am now, at twenty-seven years old, bright, funny, warm, caring and kind. But of course people don’t see that when they look at Jemima Jones. They simply see fat.”

— Jane Green

21. “Life is so easy when you are young, she thinks. You can say and do almost anything, safe in the knowledge that an apology will make everything better. The older you get, the more impact those harmful words and deeds have. Once said, those words cannot be unspoken.”

— Jane Green

22. “Being an introvert really means you recharge your batteries by being alone. You can be sociable, and outgoing and enjoy people, but only for limited amounts of time. Large groups and lots of stimulation exhaust an introvert. Literally, for every hour spent at a party, an introvert will need two hours on their own.” “I’m.”

— Jane Green

23. “Whenever our friends get involved with married men we hear about what they say and it’s always the same and we always tell our friends that he’s never going to leave her, but the minute it happens to us, the minute we meet a married man and he says he loves his wife but he’s not in love with her, we believe him.”

— Jane Green

24. “The only thing I know for certain is that everything passes. The good times, the bad times.”

— Jane Green

25. “As Carrie Fisher once said in a film, everyone thinks they have good taste and a sense of humour.”

— Jane Green

26. “Men haven’t changed: they love the thrill of the chase, and if you hand yourself over on a plate they’ll lose interest.”

— Jane Green

27. “Each of us may think we know exactly what we need to make us happy, what will be good for us, what will ensure we have our happy ending, but life rarely works out in the way we expect, and our happy ending may have all sorts of unexpected twists and turns, be shaped in all sorts of unexpected ways.”

— Jane Green

28. “Every time my dreams threaten to become reality, something always happens and I end up alone.”

— Jane Green

29. “And, then, sometime between December 26 and January 1, the festivity ends and I straggle back to my apartment feeling exhausted, broke, and somehow lonelier than before. This is when I start wondering if it might not be better for everyone if Christmas were an event staged every four years, like the Olympics. But.”

— Jane Green

30. “You can’t grow as a person,” she said sadly, ignoring my joke, “when you close yourself off emotionally. It’s all well and good saying you avoid pain by avoiding relationships, but what about the wonderful things you’re avoiding as well? What about the joy and the intimacy and the trust that come with finding someone you love?”

— Jane Green

31. “I just realized that sometimes the thing you think is going to ruin your life is the thing that saves you.”

— Jane Green

32. “Both trying to suppress the knowledge that hugs like this mean only one thing. GOODBYE.”

— Jane Green

33. “That’s the problem with lying. You can never remember what you’ve said.”

— Jane Green

34. “You hate your job. Oh, come on, don’t even. You hate your job and you just told a partner you’re handing in your written notice. The world is your oyster, Meredith. Now you just have to figure out what you want to do. How do you feel? Be honest. How does it feel to walk away from two giant parts of your life that were making you miserable?”

— Jane Green

35. “Life is where you look, right? I mean look for the bad, you’ll find more of the bad, look for the good, you’ll find more of the good.”

— Jane Green

36. “Nothing like being with people you’ve known almost your entire life. Having a shared history is something you just can’t create with the new ones. No matter how much you like that, it just isn’t the same.”

— Jane Green

37. “Thoroughly unprepared, we take the step into the afternoon of life. Worse still, we take this step with the false presupposition that our truths and ideals will serve us as hitherto. But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning, for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true, at evening will have become a lie’.”

— Jane Green

38. “Other people’s behavior is none of my business.”

— Jane Green

39. “I think relationships are very difficult. It’s very easy to get swept away with excitement, glamour, and passion. I think the trick is to look for friendship rather than passion.”

— Jane Green

40. “All those years of beauty, of a wonderful figure, and all I could think was that I was never pretty enough, never slim enough, never quite good enough. What I would give to have those years back, to appreciate them more, to appreciate the life I had while I was living it.”

— Jane Green

41. “The place she felt happiest, the place she found her solace and joy, was in the pages of books. She.”

— Jane Green

42. “You were so talented,” her mother says, smiling. “It is such a pity you didn’t pursue that. Don’t marry someone because you think you need a partner. And don’t marry someone who tries to mold you into what he wants his wife to be. You’re better than that. Marry, if you do at all, only someone who loves you just the way you are. Because you are precious. There. I’ve said my piece. Are you still talking to me?” Meredith.”

— Jane Green

43. “The biggest mistake any of us can make is to keep secrets. They always come out in the end, and it is the unspoken that causes the most problems.”

— Jane Green

44. “I know that sounds odd, but I have always felt that the English love children as long as they are polite, quiet, and well behaved. Americans seem to love children however they behave.”

— Jane Green

45. “For as long as I can remember, I have always had the feeling of not quite fitting in, not being the same as everyone else.”

— Jane Green

46. “Luck is not on her side today. It wasn’t on her side this morning when she woke up to hear a door slamming downstairs and her husband bel- lowing her name, and it isn’t on her side now.”

— Jane Green

47. “She walks along the pavement, lost in thoughts about the Internet, so deeply immersed that before she knows it she’s at her front door, and guess what? She completely forgot to buy some chocolate on the war home.”

— Jane Green

48. “Forever feels a long time when you’re eighteen. When you’re away from home for the first time in your life, when you forge instant friendships that are so strong they are destined, surely, to be with you until the bitter end.”

— Jane Green

49. “However close you are, you know that’s another friend you won’t be seeing anymore. You won’t have anything in common anymore, since you are not interested in babies, and they are no longer interested in life.”

— Jane Green

50. “Marriage should be about fun. It’s about friendship, and laughter, and trust, and fun.”

— Jane Green