Top 200 Jennifer E. Smith Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “There’s always a gap between the burn and the sting of it, the pain and the realization.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

52. “And it’s more than just the distance, You know it is. Nobody survives this kind of thing. You pretend it’s going to work, and you make all these promises, and then you talk on the phone every night and text each other between classes and maybe manage a visit during fall break or something. But then everything’s awkward, because so much has changed, and you don’t fit into each other’s lives anymore.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

53. “Nothing’s all that scary if you can see it coming.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

54. “My thoughts are scrambled by the nearness of him, and my chest aches with something deeper than love, something lonelier than hope...”

— Jennifer E. Smith

55. “Here. There. Everywhere. Somewhere. Home.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

56. “Because as far as she was concerned, there was no in-between: She wanted all or nothing, illogically, irrationally, even though something inside her knew that nothing would be too hard, and all was impossible.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

57. “And the geography of the thing – the geography of them – was completely and hopelessly wrong.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

58. “You can’t survive a rift that big without it leaving a mark.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

59. “I love Graham Larkin,” she said quietly, her voice full of emotion, and there was a flicker of surprise on his face, and then his expression softened. “You’re supposed to shout it,” he said, smiling as she tugged on the brim of the cap, forcing him to lower his face, bringing him closer and closer until their lips met. And even though they were in the middle of one of the biggest cities in the world, lost in a sea of concrete and wood and metal, she could almost swear he tasted like the ocean.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

60. “I don’t have a smartphone... I have a very, very dumb phone. In fact, it’s kind of an idiot.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

61. “Love wasn’t something you could take back. It was like a magic spell: Once you said the words, they were simply out there, shifting and changing everything that had once been true.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

62. “It’s not supposed to reflect reality,” she said. “Reality is all well and good. But sometimes you just want to pretend the world is a better place than it actually is. That great and wonderful things can happen. That love triumphs over everything.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

63. “What was she supposed to do, spend Christmas there and Easter here? See her dad every other holiday and one week during the summer, just enough to glimpse his new life in fragments, tiny slivers of a world she had no part in? And all the while missing out on those moments of her mom’s life–her mom, who’d done nothing to deserve to spend Christmas alone?”

— Jennifer E. Smith

64. “Look what a hard time I’ve given him. But no matter how many times I’ve pushed him away, he always comes back around again. And I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

65. “He hadn’t realized how much it could mean, having someone to talk to like that; he hadn’t realized that it could be a kind of lifeline, and that without it, there would be nobody to save you if you started to drown.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

66. “And I want us to be happy again.” “You already said that.” “Yeah,” she said, “but I figure it’s worth repeating.” “Well, it must be working,” he said, tightening his arms around her. “I don’t know about you, but I feel about a million times happier already.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

67. “It seemed to Ellie that you could tell a lot about someone by the way they carried a secret – by how safe they kept it, how soon they told, the way they acted when they were trying to keep it from spilling out.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

68. “And when the time finally comes to say good-bye, she’ll swallow hard against the tightness of her throat and the weight of her heart. She’ll think I’ll miss you and she’ll think don’t go and she’ll think please. But what she’ll finally say is simply thank you, and it will mean all of these things – everything promised and remembered, everything wordless and spoken and understood – and so much more.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

69. “The truth is, she’s still waiting for her heart to get on board with the decision her heart has made.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

70. “Cheerfulness and contentment are great beautifiers.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

71. “It’s not easy, you know? To get the thing you want most in the world in the worst way possible.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

72. “How many times can a life be split into a before and an after?”

— Jennifer E. Smith

73. “How are you supposed to find what you’re looking for if you’re not convinced it’s even out there?”

— Jennifer E. Smith

74. “They were just so different, and she kept wondering if he’d realize this was a mistake at some point; if, once she stopped being the novelty, the random American, he would recognize who she really was – a nerdy bookworm, a happy loner – and move on.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

75. “There are different kinds of happy, some kinds don’t need any proof. – Ellie O’Neill.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

76. “Because how do you say goodbye to a piece of yourself?”

— Jennifer E. Smith

77. “You wait for ages, and then two come along at once.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

78. “It didn’t help that she was right; when had that ever made anything better?”

— Jennifer E. Smith

79. “It’s because you’re thinking big picture. That’ll knock the wind out of you every time. You have to take it in pieces.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

80. “When there was nothing but space between you, everything felt like a leap.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

81. “I suppose my biggest fear is never seeing my son again. You don’t know what happiness is – what it really means – until it’s taken away from you. Then you realize the world will never be as bright as it was.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

82. “Now his story has shifted. He’s no longer the underdog. Instead he’s suddenly the luckiest guy in the room, in the school, maybe even in the whole city. He’s the luckiest guy anybody knows, and there’s no need to root for someone like that to win. Because guys like that – lucky guys, fortunate guys – they don’t need any support. And the audience knows it.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

83. “She could only hope that in a place filled with so many wonders, it would have still been possible to appreciate something as remarkable and ordinary as all this.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

84. “Most things are easier than you think,” she says. “It’s deciding to do them that’s hard.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

85. “That light he’d felt when he first saw her – he understood now that it was only a lightbulb. It was quick and easy, full of electricity, but there was something artificial about it. What he wanted was fire: heat and spark and flame.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

86. “It was exactly as he’d thought it would be, like the first time and the millionth time all at once, like being wide awake, like losing his balance. Only this time, it wasn’t just him; this time, they were losing their balance together.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

87. “For the first time in her life, she realized there was no hope of blending in.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

88. “It can’t be epic if there’s no challenge to it.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

89. “He was a professor, a lover of stories, and he was building her a library in the same way other men might build their daughters houses.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

90. “He’s looking at her like she’s the answer to some sort of riddle.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

91. “They just stood there, regarding each other silently, the room suddenly as quiet as the elevator had been, as comfortable as the kitchen floor, as remote as the roof. Because that’s what happened when you were with someone like that: the world shrank to just the right size. It molded itself to fit only the two of you, and nothing more.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

92. “And like every ending, it was a strange mix of exuberance and sorrow.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

93. “It’s just one more thing she hadn’t considered, and as the idea of it settles over her, she realizes again how entwined their lives are. They’re like two trees whose branches have grown together. Even if you pull them out by the trunks, they’re still going to be twisted and tangled and nearly impossible to separate at the roots.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

94. “Even if she were telling the truth, she would somehow manage to appear guilty.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

95. “Looks like the wrong kind of bait can get you the right kind of fish.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

96. “As if it were far easier to start over completely than to try to put everything back together again.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

97. “I mean, come on. If they really wished you were there, they’d have invited you in the first place, right? It’s kind of mean, if you really think about it. It should say: ‘Greece: Where nobody’s all that upset you’re not here.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

98. “Unlike most people, Peter didn’t look to the future for reassurance; he understood that the only thing certain in life is the past. History repeats itself again and again, and every story has been told before. It seemed to him that life could be terribly unoriginal in that way, and the only manner of certainty – the only way to know what might be ahead – was to look back on what had already happened.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

99. “It’s time to move on, and the more time they spend wishing it were otherwise, the harder it will be to let go.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

100. “They weren’t so much a constellation, the five of them, as a series of scattered stars.”

— Jennifer E. Smith