Top 200 Jay Asher Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “You’ve heard of the butterfly effect, right? That if a butterfly flaps its wings at just the right time in just the right place. It can cause a hurricane thousands of miles away. It’s chaos theory, but see, chaos theory isn’t exactly about chaos. It’s about how a tiny change in a big system can affect everything.”

— Jay Asher

2. “A lot of you cared, just not enough.”

— Jay Asher

3. “If my love were an ocean, there would be no more land. If my love were a desert, you would see only sand. If my love were a star- late at night, only light. And if my love could grow wings, I’d be soaring in flight.”

— Jay Asher

4. “But sometimes there’s nothing left to do but move on.”

— Jay Asher

5. “The road to publication is like a churro – long and bumpy, but sweet.”

— Jay Asher

6. “No one knows for certain how much impact they have on the lives of other people. Oftentimes, we have no clue. Yet we push it just the same.”

— Jay Asher

7. “But you can’t get away from yourself. You can’t decide not to see yourself anymore. You can’t decide to turn off the noise in your head.”

— Jay Asher

8. “I hate not knowing what to believe anymore. I hate not knowing what’s real.”

— Jay Asher

9. “After all, how often do we get a second chance?”

— Jay Asher

10. “You don’t know what goes on in anyone’s life but your own.”

— Jay Asher

11. “It’s hard to be disappointed when what you expected turns out to be true.”

— Jay Asher

12. “A flood of emotions rushes into me. Pain and anger. Sadness and pity. But most surprising of all, hope.”

— Jay Asher

13. “You can hear rumors. But you can’t know them.”

— Jay Asher

14. “I can’t. You can’t rewrite the past.”

— Jay Asher

15. “When the right moment appears, the key is to not let it pass.”

— Jay Asher

16. “Maybe if I forgot things once in a while, we’d all be a little bit happier.”

— Jay Asher

17. “Because what if I got to know you and you turned out to be just like they said? What if you weren’t the person I hoped you were? That, more than anything, would have hurt the most.”

— Jay Asher

18. “Because I’ve heard so many stories that I don’t know which one is the most popular. But I do know which is the least popular. The truth.”

— Jay Asher

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

19. “Betrayal. It’s one of the worst feelings.”

— Jay Asher

20. “Because it may seem like a small role now, but it matters. In the end, everything matters.”

— Jay Asher

21. “I left. When I should have stayed.”

— Jay Asher

22. “Rejection always hurts, but having it come from my best friend was the worst.”

— Jay Asher

23. “You don’t belong in the same way as the others. It’s like that song: One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just doesn’t belong.”

— Jay Asher

24. “It’s up to the reader to decipher the code, or the words, based on everything they know about life and emotions.”

— Jay Asher

25. “Don’t give up on me now. I’m sorry. I guess that’s an odd thing to say. Because isn’t that what I’m doing? Giving up?”

— Jay Asher

26. “They were like two magnets who couldn’t decide whether to attract or repel.”

— Jay Asher

27. “Sometimes we have thoughts that even we don’t understand. Thoughts that aren’t even true – that aren’t really how we feel – but they’re running through our heads anyway because they’re interesting to think about.”

— Jay Asher

28. “I sat. And I thought. And the more I thought, connecting the events in my life, the more my heart collapsed.”

— Jay Asher

29. “When you try rescuing someone and discover they can’t be reached, why would you ever throw that back in their face?”

— Jay Asher

30. “I hope you’re ready, because I’m about to tell you the story of my life. More specifically, why my life ended. And if you’re listening to these tapes, you’re one of the reasons why.”

— Jay Asher

31. “And when you mess with one part of a person’s life, you’re not messing with just that part. When you mess with one part of a person’s life, you’re messing with their entire life.”

— Jay Asher

32. “No one knows for certain how much impact they have on the lives of other people – Hannah Baker.”

— Jay Asher

33. “And what about you-the rest of you-did you notice the scars you left behind? No. Probably not. Because most of them can’t be seen with the naked eye.”

— Jay Asher

34. “Maybe it’s not as important to you as it was for me, but that’s not for you to decide.”

— Jay Asher

35. “When you hold people up for ridicule, you have to take responsibility when other people act on it.”

— Jay Asher

36. “Dream big, they say. Shoot for the stars. Then they lock us away for 12 years and tell where to sit, when to pee and what to think. Then we turn 18, and even though we’ve never had an original thought, we have to make the most important decisions of our lives.”

— Jay Asher

37. “But I need to wake up somehow. Or maybe not. Maybe it’s best to get through the day half-asleep. Maybe that’s the only way to get through today.”

— Jay Asher

38. “This time, for the first time, I saw the possibilities in giving up. I even found hope in it.”

— Jay Asher

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

39. “Your heart is going to break in a few days, he says. It will. But I won’t make it hurt more by taking away the next few days with him.”

— Jay Asher

40. “One little ripple started today could create a typhoon fifteen years from now.”

— Jay Asher

41. “When you write a book for publication, you’re writing it for other people to read.”

— Jay Asher

42. “What the hell happened to Pluto?!”

— Jay Asher

43. “Nadie sabe lo que sucede en la vida de nadie, salvo en la propia. Y cuando le arruinas una parte de la vida a alguien, no le arruinas solo aquella parte. Desafortunadamente, no se puede ser tan preciso y selectivo. Cuando le arruinas una parte de su vida, le arruinas la vida entera.”

— Jay Asher

44. “How can you fix something if you don’t know what’s broken? Hannah didn’t tell us.”

— Jay Asher

45. “When you mess with one part of a person’s life, you’re messing with their entire life.”

— Jay Asher

46. “But I do know which is the least popular. The truth.”

— Jay Asher

47. “But they were wrong. There was a reason.”

— Jay Asher

48. “Do you remember the last thing you said to me? The last thing you did to me? And what was the last thing I said to you? Because trust me when I said it I knew it was the last thing I’d ever say.”

— Jay Asher

49. “I wanted to tell you everything. And that hurt because some things were too scary. Some things even I didn’t understand. How could I tell someone – someone I was really talking to for the first time – everything I was thinking? I couldn’t. It was too soon.”

— Jay Asher

50. “People grow apart, and sometimes, there nothing anyone can do about it.”

— Jay Asher