Top 200 Jennifer E. Smith Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “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

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

— 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. “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

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

— Jennifer E. Smith

106. “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

107. “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

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

— Jennifer E. Smith

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

— Jennifer E. Smith

110. “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

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

— Jennifer E. Smith

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

— Jennifer E. Smith

113. “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

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

— Jennifer E. Smith

115. “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

116. “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

117. “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

118. “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

119. “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

120. “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

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

— Jennifer E. Smith

122. “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

123. “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

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

— Jennifer E. Smith

125. “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

126. “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

127. “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

128. “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

129. “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

130. “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

131. “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

132. “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

133. “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

134. “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

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

— Jennifer E. Smith

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

— Jennifer E. Smith

137. “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

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

— Jennifer E. Smith

139. “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

140. “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

141. “If you were to draw a map of the two of them, of where they started out and where they would both end up, the lines would be shooting away from each other like magnets spun around on their poles. And it occurred to Owen that there was something deeply flawed about this, that there should be circles or angels or turns, anything that might make it possible for the two lines to meet again. Instead, they were both headed in the exact opposite directions. The map was as good as a door swinging shut. And the geography of the thing- the geography of them- was completely and hopelessly wrong.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

142. “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

143. “Maybe this was why Owen had been so desperate to travel, why she’d longed for it herself without ever really knowing why. It wasn’t just that you got to be somewhere else entirely. It was that you got to be someone else entirely, too.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

144. “For a long time, it had felt like something way out on the horizon, this moment, something she had to squint to make out, so far away it didn’t seem quite real. Until now, when it’s suddenly hurtling toward them at an impossible pace, so swiftly that it doesn’t matter whether or not Clare is ready for it. There’s no preparing at this point. There’s only steeling yourself. There’s only hoping for the best.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

145. “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

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

— Jennifer E. Smith

147. “They were like a couple of asteroids that had collided, she and Owen, briefly sparking before ricocheting off again, a little chipped, maybe even a little scarred, but with miles and miles still to go.”

— Jennifer E. Smith

148. “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

149. “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

150. “But it was different, somehow, to be reading it here, where the actual events had taken place all those hundreds of thousands of years ago. That was the thing about books, she was realizing; they could take you somewhere else entirely, it was true. But it wasn’t the same thing as actually going there yourself.”

— Jennifer E. Smith