Top 200 Julie Murphy Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “I get what he means, because I think I’ve played pretend my whole life. I don’t know when, but a really long time ago, I decided who I wanted to be. And I’ve been acting like her – whoever she is – since. But I think the act is fading, and I don’t know if I like the person I am beneath it all. I wish there were some kind of magic words that could bridge the gap between the person I am and the one I wish I could be. Because the whole fake it till you make it thing? It’s not working for me.”

— Julie Murphy

152. “But that’s me. I’m fat. It’s not a cuss word. It’s not an insult. At least it’s not when I say it. So I always figure why not get it out of the way?”

— Julie Murphy

153. “It was the thing I planned out in my head in those moments between asleep and awake when my brain was unable to tell the difference between dreams and reality.”

— Julie Murphy

154. “Since the day she died, I’ve felt that Lucy was only mine to memorialize and that if I faltered, I’d be letting her down in the worst kind of way. The realization that she wasn’t just mine comes as a painful relief.”

— Julie Murphy

155. “I think so many of us waste too much time dreaming of the things we believe we can’t have. But I’m done dreaming. I’m ready to make my dreams my reality.”

— Julie Murphy

156. “She was dying and I was living and I didn’t know how we could do both at the same time.”

— Julie Murphy

157. “I was so scared that all the big things I wanted would never be anything more than wants.”

— Julie Murphy

158. “I don’t know how to form the words to explain to El that not only did I get my first kiss, but it ended up being a full-on make-out session.”

— Julie Murphy

159. “The only voice that isn’t there – the one I need the most – is my own.”

— Julie Murphy

160. “When your options are limited to being miserable in private or being mortified in public, there is no choice. I can’t get on the plane.”

— Julie Murphy

161. “Just the thought of Dad crying made me cry too.”

— Julie Murphy

162. “But the doors open, and I’m slightly grateful for it, too. Because how do people even function like this? Like, how is it that people can even pump gas or pay bills or tie their shoes when they’re in love? Or might be in love. Or are in love. Or are in between the two.”

— Julie Murphy

163. “Go big or go home’ – Willowdean.”

— Julie Murphy

164. “And there it is. I fell in love. I’m in love with Henry Mackenzie. I always assumed I would have a difficult time knowing if I was in love. What if I didn’t recognize the signs? Or what if it wasn’t as intoxicating as the whole world has built it up to be? But, for me, it feels very simple. It’s the kind of thing I know with just as much assurance as my birthday. It’s not something I feel lost in or confused by. It’s a truth, and some truths hurt more than others.”

— Julie Murphy

165. “If that sounds confusing to you, join the club.”

— Julie Murphy

166. “Hannah shouldn’t have to get braces. Maybe she can’t afford them or maybe she’s scared to get them. Either way, she shouldn’t have to fill her mouth with metal so that some shitheads will leave her alone.”

— Julie Murphy

167. “The body I have shouldn’t change how deserving I am of my dreams. – Millie.”

— Julie Murphy

168. “I hate that there’s never anyting good on TV on Saturday afternoons. It’s like even the networks are trying to get you off your ass and have a life.”

— Julie Murphy

169. “But isn’t that the point of labels like boyfriend and girlfriend? To make things easier for other people? Isn’t that sad? It’s like the whole world has to walk around with name tags on so we can all feel more comfortable? I guess things are less scary if you know what to call the.”

— Julie Murphy

170. “If the shoe fits,’ he whispers.”

— Julie Murphy

171. “She’d call us her bee-utiful girls and take us for hot chocolate on Mondays, because Fridays didn’t deserve all the attention. It was funny. I used to think of myself as a Monday and Ellen as a Friday. But Mondays and Fridays were just twenty-four-hour stretches of time with different names.”

— Julie Murphy

172. “But we can’t walk around scared all the time. That’s no way to do things.”

— Julie Murphy

173. “Starting at a new school kind of stinks. Even if everyone is pretty cool. But it’s not the same. At my old school me and my friends started a club called Paranormal Appreciation Society. How could I ever find anything that cool again?”

— Julie Murphy

174. “You’re like an anti-depressant in human form.”

— Julie Murphy

175. “But I wondered sometimes, the way your mind asks those big questions, like whether or not there’s a god or how a girl can think she’s ugly one day and pretty the next.”

— Julie Murphy

176. “There are times when I feel like I can’t be me. I can’t simply exist. I have to offer something in exchange. Something that absolves me of being fat and gay and even worse – both of those things at once.”

— Julie Murphy

177. “Isn’t that sad? It’s like the whole world has to walk around with name tags on so we can all feel more comfortable? I guess things are less scary if you know what to call them.”

— Julie Murphy

178. “I looked up at him, his lips just a breath from mine. “I love you too, Nolan. I love you in the dark. I love you in the light. I love you everywhere.” He tilted his head up and yelled with all his might. “I love you, Bee Hobbes! I love you loud enough for the world to hear!” And then he turned his face down to me, nuzzling his nose against mine. “I love you so much that when you’re not near me, I feel like I’m missing an actual organ,” he whispered.”

— Julie Murphy

179. “Sometimes half of doing something is pretending that you can.”

— Julie Murphy

180. “No matter how much I tell myself that the fat and the stretch marks don’t matter, they do.”

— Julie Murphy

181. “I get called a freak everyday. I might as well make a show of it.”

— Julie Murphy

182. “Really, the criteria is simple. Do you have a body? Put a swimsuit on it.”

— Julie Murphy

183. “Not everyone who goes to private school is rich. Especially not the poor kids who can play basketball.”

— Julie Murphy

184. “Don’t you see how belittling this is! I’m not brave for wearing a dress. I’m just living!”

— Julie Murphy

185. “I don’t get it – how you can feel like there are no consequences for living with your feelings on your sleeve.”

— Julie Murphy

186. “Mitch doesn’t talk to him like he’s some little kid. Because to Mitch, he’s not. To Mitch, everyone’s somebody.”

— Julie Murphy

187. “I get what he’s saying. When you’ve known someone for so long, you don’t see the same things in them that everyone else does. But then when you’re friends because of who you were and not who you are, it’s hard not to find the common thread that stitches you together.”

— Julie Murphy

188. “Maybe you only ever notice the distance when it’s you who’s being left behind.”

— Julie Murphy

189. “But you have Aurelia. She’s, like, your ride or die. I don’t have a lifelong BFF like that.” “You will. One day you’ll wake up and find that there’s a woman, or maybe a few, who have outlasted every changing season in your life.”

— Julie Murphy

190. “It’s not that I’m jealous of Ellen and Tim or that Tim steals Ellen away from me or even that I want Tim for myself. But I want what they have. I want a person to kiss hello.”

— Julie Murphy

191. “I suck in a breath. This is what it feels like when your life starts happening, I think.”

— Julie Murphy

192. “And that’s it. Tenth grade is over. The parking lot is all primal cheers and tires screeching. But I don’t have it, that sense of progress. Instead, I feel stuck, waiting for my own life to happen.”

— Julie Murphy

193. “Actually, at home, my parents simply referred to him as “bro.”

— Julie Murphy

194. “She had this way, when she wasn’t talking about foreign politics or global warming, of making sense of all the complex things I never knew how to describe.”

— Julie Murphy

195. “Because how do people even function like this? Like, how is it that people can even pump gas or pay bills or tie their shoes when they’re in love?”

— Julie Murphy

196. “That feeling I get when I’m riding my bike down the steep hill of Freddie’s street is the only way I know how to explain it. The world around me is a blur except for him. I feel like.”

— Julie Murphy

197. “I wanted to be honest with you, Alice. But then you got sick. I couldn’t do that to you.”

— Julie Murphy

198. “Child, you don’t need heels. You’re fierce all on your own.” She.”

— Julie Murphy

199. “I don’t blame him,” he continues. “It’s that feeling of people leaving. It’s scary.”

— Julie Murphy

200. “You can’t expect the younger version of you to know who your friends are going to be. People change.” -Callie.”

— Julie Murphy