Top 50 Jessica Pan Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “I don’t know what I’m doing, but whatever this is, it feels right to me.”

— Jessica Pan

2. “I moved here over a year ago and I already feel like I’m ten times smarter than I was when I first arrived.”

— Jessica Pan

3. “I don’t want to stay here so long that I can’t see the good parts anymore. Your adventures in Paris just made me realize how my experience in Beijing is already heavy with memories, not all of them nice.”

— Jessica Pan

4. “Social anxiety is a completely normal experience. We are social animals. We want to be accepted by our peer groups and we do not want to be rejected. If people do not have any social anxiety, something is seriously wrong with them.”

— Jessica Pan

5. “The interlude before anything begins is always my favorite moment. So much unknown, but everything is already set up and we both know something is going to happen – but we just don’t know how or when yet.”

— Jessica Pan

6. “I’m still trying to figure out what my life here is going to look like.”

— Jessica Pan

7. “Where do selfish, godless, lazy people go to make friends? That’s where I need to be.”

— Jessica Pan

8. “It’s not that we want others to fail, but we need to know that our own sorrows have echoes in others people’s lives. That’s what connects us. Strength may be impressive, but it’s vulnerability that builds friendships.”

— Jessica Pan

9. “I feel like the kindly village idiot wandering the city. But try as I might, I can’t get past the mundane. Stefan helped me make contact with strangers. Now I needed someone to help me connect with them.”

— Jessica Pan

10. “Loneliness, on the other hand, has no age bracket. I used to think that exciting countries could keep you happy and warm on novelty alone. Now I know: you can move to Paris, delight in the city, drink your cafe au lait, but no matter how pretty the buildings and balconies are, eventually you’re going to find yourself hugging the lamp posts for company like you’re in Les Miserables.”

— Jessica Pan

11. “He makes me so nervous because I like him so much. He’s done so much that I’ve always wanted to do.”

— Jessica Pan

12. “I can’t live here forever, but it doesn’t feel right to go somewhere else without a purpose. I’m ready for a new adventure. I still feel too young to stop exploring.”

— Jessica Pan

13. “When you believe something about yourself for so long but then finally challenge it, everything feels different. I want to dance. I want to run. I feel like knocking on all the doors and shouting, “I am a REAL rabbit! I AM REAL!”

— Jessica Pan

14. “Good friends, family, and some vague acquaintances were sitting on my bed – which was incidentally the very place I usually went to escape from those good friends, family, and vague acquaintances. I had nowhere to hide. They were here for a party. How long until they left?”

— Jessica Pan

15. “People are usually very happy to answer personal questions if they feel the person asking them is genuine and kind.”

— Jessica Pan

16. “There’s a simplicity and sense of adventure to being alone.”

— Jessica Pan

17. “Sometimes when I have been low, very low, I have emerged from the slump by forcing myself to go on an escapade with an outgoing friend who really listens and cares. I know that sounds too simple, but I promise it gives you perspective – more perspective than watching TV alone.”

— Jessica Pan

18. “I don’t volunteer. I don’t participate in organized religion. I don’t play team sports. Where do selfish, godless, lazy people go to make friends? That’s where I need to be.”

— Jessica Pan

19. “And, just like that, my life is completely unrecognizable from what it was last week.”

— Jessica Pan

20. “I have to make a fool of myself daily to get anything done, including buying food and toiletries. Because of this, I’m losing my self-conscious shell, and it’s so freeing.”

— Jessica Pan

21. “Taking the first step might feel awkward, but literally nothing in life happens if someone doesn’t make the first move. You lose nothing by offering a casual invite for coffee or a drink. Moving from the app to texting makes this much easier. If they say no, that’s fine. At least you know.”

— Jessica Pan

22. “Introvert or extrovert, shy or outgoing – loneliness can catch you, no matter who you are.”

— Jessica Pan

23. “I also have no idea how to be a girlfriend. I love sleeping alone and I avoid sick people at all costs. I don’t even cook for myself, so I need someone who appreciates a lovingly baked frozen pizza.”

— Jessica Pan

24. “Every single person I’ve met, Astrid has also met. No one has met just me as me. I’m always in addition to her.”

— Jessica Pan

25. “I’m in search of something more than a new place, though. I’m in search of a feeling and a state of being: that magical time when you can’t possibly predict what’s going to happen next or whom you are going to meet or where they are going to take you. In this state, everything flows, every surprise is a delight, and new people guide you to special adventures.”

— Jessica Pan

26. “I’m learning this is how life works: we nearly die, and ten minutes later we’re throwing tantrums about getting a speeding ticket on our way back from the hospital.”

— Jessica Pan

27. “Sam and I both worked at the same magazine and it was the first time I’d ever felt completely and totally at ease with someone who I was also attracted to.”

— Jessica Pan

28. “I have been gone for some time now. It’s hard to see my family only once or twice a year. I thought it would get easier as time passed, but it feels like as I get older, it makes me more sad. Sometimes I wake up in my apartment and really remember that most of my friends and family are more than six thousand miles away from me and I get a pang of loneliness.”

— Jessica Pan

29. “Maybe he doesn’t like real women, only ideal women he puts on pedestals.”

— Jessica Pan

30. “The fear and bleak reality of being boring and dying having never connected with anyone is vastly underestimated.”

— Jessica Pan

31. “It was raining and we sat huddled on the front steps of our porch and drank and laughed about how we had no idea what we were doing with our lives but we had ten more months to figure it out. Those were the days, my friend! We had it so good!”

— Jessica Pan

32. “In my ind, there exists a clear divide between before I met him and after and I don’t know how to go back to the before.”

— Jessica Pan

33. “And so here’s the first massive stumbling block in my year of extroverting: I am afraid of talking to strangers.”

— Jessica Pan

34. “I don’t know exactly what drove me to stray, but I think there’s a certain sadness to finally getting what you want.”

— Jessica Pan

35. “I just made the mistake of thinking that our connection was special, when in fact, everyone feels connected to Maxwell.”

— Jessica Pan

36. “At least you didn’t waste years on him. It’s better to know the truth about someone sooner, rather than later.”

— Jessica Pan

37. “The main accepted definition is that introverts get their energy from being alone, whereas extroverts get their energy from being around other people.”

— Jessica Pan

38. “I’m tired of starting over in new countries. The first two times were exciting, but the next place I go, I want to stay for a long time. Each time, it gets harder and harder to leave behind my friends, my work, and all of my connections. I’d love to be in a place where I can have 113 books without giving them all away in a year or buy something that weighs more than five pounds.”

— Jessica Pan

39. “I saw my life if I stayed at the PR firm, and the dread and fear of that life.”

— Jessica Pan

40. “I fell in love with him. But I don’t just stay with him by default as if there’s no one else available. I stay with him because I choose to everyday that I wake up, everyday that we fight or lie to each other or disappoint each other. I choose him over and over again, and he chooses me.”

— Jessica Pan

41. “And you have to remind yourself that new opportunities exist, and will always exist.”

— Jessica Pan

42. “I’m always going to have a soft spot for this city in my life. This is where I sort of grew up. So many romantic mistakes.”

— Jessica Pan

43. “I’ve fallen into so many flings because I’ve always felt that I must explore! I must have adventures! I only live once! But there were a lot of mistakes in that waiting room. Only a handful loved me, but those were the ones I never loved back.”

— Jessica Pan

44. “Research says that we have the most friends we’ll ever have when we are twenty-nine, while other studies say we start to lose friends after the age of twenty-five.”

— Jessica Pan

45. “Talking is what bonds us to other people the most, and we are supposed to learn this through experience out in the real world, but I’d spent that time hibernating with a book.”

— Jessica Pan

46. “Note to future selves: Never buy anything. You will just have to pack it in a suitcase one day and be at the mercy of airline attendants and their draconian weight regulations.”

— Jessica Pan

47. “We’ve both moved our lives across the world and when it comes to what we are looking for, I think we’re getting warmer.”

— Jessica Pan

48. “My confidence was dangerously high. Like, tall-American-men-after-four-beers high.”

— Jessica Pan

49. “At twenty, everything here felt new and exciting. Every adventure felt like a life-changing experience. And now, at twenty-four, it feels slightly muted. Has it changed because of life experience? Is this what getting older is?”

— Jessica Pan

50. “I had that very strange sensation of not recognizing my own life.”

— Jessica Pan