Top 200 Jennifer E. Smith Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 3 of 5

101. “Maybe they were never meant to have more than just one night. After all, not everything can last. Not everything is supposed to mean something.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

102. “The card is in his hand and I can almost see the words from here, though I’ve been carrying them around with me for so long that I don’t need reminding. They’re like a second heartbeat, steady and painful and true: I love you, I love you, I love you.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

103. “The only time it doesn’t help to imagine the sky is when you’re thirty thousand feet in the air with nowhere to go but down.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

104. “It was one thing to count on someone who was dead and gone, to rely on an idea or a memory, a personal with no real influence over her life outside of her imagination. But it was another thing entirely to have someone actually want to be there for you, unfailingly and unquestioningly, someone who listened carefully and told you the truth and waited patiently until you were ready to be there for them, too.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

105. “They’d been talking about grade school memories, and he’d confessed that he always had trouble making valentines as a kid, especially the kind where you had to fold your piece of construction paper and trace out half a heart. They always came out looking like pink blobs, he’d written. Isn’t that really all a heart is anyway? Ellie had replied. Now.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

106. “Is it possible not to ever know your type-not to even know you have a type-until quite suddenly you do?”

— Jennifer E. Smith

107. “It was real,” she said, her voice thick. “Wasn’t it?” He looked up at her. “What was?” “Us,” she said. “Last summer.” “Yeah,” he said, stepping back again. “It was.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

108. “It’s not that you’re actually an island, Alice. It’s just that you still act like one. And nobody can change that but you.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

109. “The important part is that you had someone to stick by you all that time. Even when everything sucked.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

110. “Today was a day for sailing and drinking, for bobbing out under the blazing sun until the sky flipped over into dark and the fireworks were sent scribbling out over all of it.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

111. “Well, I guess we all can’t have epic loves at such a young age.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

112. “But it’s more than that. It’s the same icy dread that fills her each time she starts to imagine it; not just the goodbye, but everything that’s to come afterward: the hurt that will surely trail them to opposite coasts, so strong that she can already feel it even now, when he’s only inches away. The truth is, she’s still waiting for her heart to get on board with the decision her head has made. But she’s running out of time.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

113. “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

114. “Time automatically didn’t amount to anything.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

115. “Ellie looked over at him, and her stomach fluttered. They’d only just found each other again. And for the first time in a long time, there was still so much to say.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

116. “It’s like I’d been living on a map my whole life and have only now realized the world is actually a globe.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

117. “His heart aches, not because he loves her – he hasn’t for a long time now – but because he loved her once, and that’s something that never completely leaves you.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

118. “Just like when you’re young and in love, a seven-hour plane ride can seem like a lifetime.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

119. “Not everything can last. Not everything is supposed to mean something.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

120. “There’s always that tiny piece of hope that this day – your day – will be the one to turn out differently.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

121. “There’s always a gap between the burn and the sting of it, the pain and the realization... You can’t survive a rift that big without it leaving a mark.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

122. “It’s not supposed to,” Mom said with a smile. “Love is the strangest, most illogical thing in the world.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

123. “A relationship doesn’t have a shot in hell if you start planning its ending before it even starts.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

124. “Perhaps if there were more time, or if time were more malleable; if she could be both places at once, live parallel lives... Because as far as she was concerned, there was no in-between: She wanted all or nothing, illogically, irrationally, even though something inside of her knew that nothing would be too hard, and all was impossible.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

125. “There was something dreamlike about it, with only the grumble of their footsteps and the sound of their breathing, her smaller hand in his, guiding him along. The beach was only a few yards behind them and the road only a few yards ahead, but right here amid the trees, it felt like they were a million miles away from anything.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

126. “Well, there’s an after-party,” he said, leaning back to look at her. “But I’m only stopping by for pictures, and then I’ve gotta fly to Manila.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

127. “Hadley didn’t know it was possible to miss someone who’s only a few feet away, but there it is: She misses him so much it nearly flattens her.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

128. “He wondered if there was a rule that you had to love all of someone, or whether you could pick out only the best parts, like piling your plate full of desserts at a buffet table and leaving the vegetables to go cold in their little metal bins.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

129. “We have all sorts of words that could describe us. But we get to choose which ones are most important.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

130. “But it wasn’t just the pace that made them feel suspended, like they were doing little more than drifting. It was the odd feeling that they’d been set loose into the world with nothing – and no on – left to reel them back again.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

131. “How long could a single night really be expected to last? How far could you stretch such a small collection of minutes? He was just a boy on a roof. She was just a girl in an elevator.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

132. “Aidan is the only person she knows who would mend a pair of sweatpants. He hates to give up on anything.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

133. “Airports are torture chambers if you’re claustrophobic.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

134. “They could be anywhere and nowhere, but they’ve somehow found themselves here, and she’s suddenly grateful for it, all of it, for the extra ticket and the way it brought them together despite everything, the bigness of the world and the unlikeliness of a moment like thiS.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

135. “That was the thing about playing with a band, Peter thought. There was always someone else to rescue you when it seemed certain you might fall behind. Only the solo acts left themselves open to those kinds of disasters.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

136. “But at the moment, he’s just watching them with an unreadable expression, his head tilted to one side. When she catches his eye, he gives her a weary smile, but in spite of everything, she can tell there’s a part of him that’s secretly enjoying it. This is just what he’d been hoping for tonight – something normal. Something light and silly and meaningless. Something that doesn’t feel like an ending.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

137. “There was so much I was trying not to say. I guess it was easier to talk about nothing than about how much I missed you.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

138. “Suddenly, it seemed there were about a million times he was supposed to have kissed her, even without the benefit of a script, even without any sort of direction.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

139. “Hadley’s never been out of the country before, but she knows enough to know that London is enormous; it is, in her limited experience, a big enough place to lose someone entirely.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

140. “And with that, they parted like two strangers, setting off in entirely different directions, just as they had in the past, as if it were some kind of bad habit, or maybe just a curse.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

141. “It took a moment to right himself, and he pulled his shoulders back as he regained his equilibrium. He didn’t want to be half asleep the first time he kissed Ellie. For that, he wanted to be wide awake.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

142. “He’d thought this was the start of something. But clearly she’d changed her mind, and he felt stunned by home quickly the whole thing had unraveled, the end coming before the beginning really even had a chance to begin.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

143. “Just because you painted a house didn’t mean the furniture inside was any different. It had to be the same with people.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

144. “He wasn’t walking because there were things to see or because he had places to go. It was far simpler than that. He was walking because it was better than staying still, and because it seemed the best possible way to escape his thoughts, which crowded his head like the fog over the bay, thick as fleece and impossible to see around.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

145. “He could be a fan of rock stars or tennis stars or the countless stars in the sky.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

146. “It wasn’t her bother that she’d needed to make herself whole again; it was Peter. And now that she knew, now that she finally realized it – in the same manner she came to realize most things: gradually, stubbornly, and then all at once – it was like she’d always known it, like there was never any other way it could have been.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

147. “Being on her own had never been a burden. Instead of weighing her down, it buoyed her up; when she was alone, she was lighter. When she was by herself, she felt untethered and free.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

148. “It was not all that different from the circus, and it came to town in much the same way. Only instead of elephants and giraffes, there were cameras and microphones. Instead of clowns and cages and tightropes, there were production assistants and trailers and yards upon yards of thick cables.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

149. “She wondered if there was a word for loneliness that wasn’t quite so general.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

150. “When you’re on the other side of it,” she says, “fifty-two years can seem like about fifty-two minutes.” She tips her head back and swallows the pill. “Just like when you’re young and in love, a seven-hour plane ride can seem like a lifetime.”

— Jennifer E. Smith