Top 500 L.J. Shen Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “It was peculiar. How both bad and good habits were born from boredom. How they turned into an obsession, an addiction, before you knew it. And how taking back control from them became a habit in itself.”

— L.J. Shen

402. “Everything I touch is tainted, Penn. Everything I want turns to ash. I spent the entire semester trying to be yours, but you’ve never once claimed my heart. I’m sending you to Adriana’s arms, not because I don’t care, but because I do. So much. Maybe too much. Because I screwed up so many relationships, the only way for us to heal is if I take myself out of the equation.”

— L.J. Shen

403. “Somehow, I’d let the worst happen. I continued loving him from afar, like the sun loved the moon. Coexisting, but distantly. Eternally star-crossed, but never close enough for comfort.”

— L.J. Shen

404. “When someone hits me with a stick, I run over them with a tank.”

— L.J. Shen

405. “His scent messes with my head. I want to reach out and caress his face. Kiss his wounds better. Beg for forgiveness. Curse him. Push him away. Cry on his shoulder for what we’ve done. For how it ended. For what we became afterward. Because I’m full of crap, and he is totally empty.”

— L.J. Shen

406. “Thank you. Let me put them in water.” “What’s the point?” He groaned, still obviously struggling with nicotine withdrawal. “They’ll die at some point anyway.” “Just like us,” I answered with a small smile. “Death is not a reason to stop living.”

— L.J. Shen

407. “Anything essential is invisible to the eye.”

— L.J. Shen

408. “I’m taking a sick day, and my PA needs to tend to me.”

— L.J. Shen

409. “Ma’am, I’m afraid – ” “Don’t be afraid. Fear is never a good look.”

— L.J. Shen

410. “It’s like looking at a scalloped picture, frayed at the edges. Everything blends in the background, and she stands out.”

— L.J. Shen

411. “Turn around and look at me, goddammit. Then you’d see I’d rather see my balls eaten by a tiger than watch you go out with someone who isn’t me.”

— L.J. Shen

412. “You can’t be afraid of love, my dear. It’s like being afraid of death. It is inevitable.”

— L.J. Shen

413. “You cannot let it define you. Or stop you. Not anymore. Anxiety is a hungry beast. Feed it, and it will grow. Starve it, and it will die. This is my final decision. I’m sorry.”

— L.J. Shen

414. “The idea was Penn’s, but it was Vaughn who backed him up and cited fire as the best way to burn things to the ground.”

— L.J. Shen

415. “Listen to me. The two most important decisions in our lives are not ours to make. Our creation and our death. We don’t choose to be born, and we don’t choose when or how we die. But everything in-between? That’s our jurisdiction. We can fill in the blanks as we please.”

— L.J. Shen

416. “Not needing money makes you rich in another way, Rory. A better way. The less you depend on it, the less it limits you.”

— L.J. Shen

417. “But when you were on your deathbed, there was no time to be mad. Vindictiveness was thrown out the window, along with any other soul-eating, negative trait that was ingrained in us. When you were on your deathbed, time reminded you just how precious it really was. Feelings were bare and open for the world to see, poke, and dig into.”

— L.J. Shen

418. “Priceless and worthless are the same sum, presented in different manners. Words make you or break you. By cursing, you reduce yourself to someone who cannot convey their feelings sufficiently.”

— L.J. Shen

419. “Carbs and sugar equal oral orgasms.”

— L.J. Shen

420. “I bowed my head down, plastering my forehead to hers, breathing her in. I closed my eyes. We both knew there was not an ounce of romance in that moment. It was a pure this-planet-is-crazy-and-the-human-condition-is-trash moment. It was an end-of-the-world moment, and there wasn’t anywhere else I’d rather be.”

— L.J. Shen

421. “He kissed away a tear that slid down my cheek, and I wish he hadn’t, because my heart broke a little more when he showed me tenderness. I wanted the ruthless version of him, the one that didn’t offer me hope, that didn’t promise a happily-ever-after ending.”

— L.J. Shen

422. “The Spencers had the wildest bedroom I’ve ever seen. If Pimp My Ride and Buckingham Palace had a lovechild, it’d be this place.”

— L.J. Shen

423. “The night before senior year I spotted you on those bleachers You looked adorable Your heart cracking for a guy Who would love to smash a foot in it and crush it into pieces.”

— L.J. Shen

424. “She smelled of flowers and coconut and my potential demise.”

— L.J. Shen

425. “The girl got a kiss on the lips from the boy who no longer howled at the moon and cried on a tree. On the forehead. Like friends do. Then he kissed her on the lips, like lovers do. Then he kissed the inside of her wrists, like soulmates do.”

— L.J. Shen

426. “When the nights get cold, the memory of your ex burns hotter.”

— L.J. Shen

427. “How is your soul feeling today?”

— L.J. Shen

428. “You’re Saturn,” she whispers. “Made of iron-nickel and surrounded by protective rings of ice and rock.”

— L.J. Shen

429. “Always remember, Francesca – you’re worth more than the sums of your mistakes.”

— L.J. Shen

430. “When you’re soft, you can contain more. And if you contain more, the world can’t break you.”

— L.J. Shen

431. “Bet? Yo?” Kill looked at me like I was a horrific car accident. “Who talks like that? What do you have against the English language? You seem to butcher it whenever the opportunity presents itself. Did English hurt you when you were young? Show me where on the doll.”

— L.J. Shen

432. “Happiness was something you were eager to share. It was pain you wanted to keep private.”

— L.J. Shen

433. “You don’t look like a princess at all. You look like the more beautiful stepsister in a Disney movie. The underdog who gets the prince at the end. The one who wasn’t born with the title, but earned it.”

— L.J. Shen

434. “How did this girl, whom I just met, manage.”

— L.J. Shen

435. “Every decision you make has a reason. Think about it.”

— L.J. Shen

436. “In the words of Joe Exotic, I am never going to recover from this. Cillian holding my hair while he is making me puke.”

— L.J. Shen

437. “Peopling was by far more exhausting than running a marathon.”

— L.J. Shen

438. “He’s fine,” I clipped. “So are you.” The driver grinned. “I’m going to smoke your eyes like beef jerky if you as much as look at her that way again,” Chase groaned. It was the first time he’d spoken since we’d gotten in the car.”

— L.J. Shen

439. “I flew directly into my cage, asking him to lock me inside. Because the beautiful lie was far more desirable than the awful truth.”

— L.J. Shen

440. “I’m turning my back on Vaughn and Knight without saying goodbye because I know they won’t let me go. They’ll promise to protect me and fight my battles at school, and a part of me still wants that to happen.”

— L.J. Shen

441. “He looked too good to be so evil.”

— L.J. Shen

442. “He did have a bar cabinet, not to my surprise, considering he’d marry booze if it were legal in the state of Illinois.”

— L.J. Shen

443. “You never know how thick or thin your book is, so you better make the most out of every scene, enjoy each chapter.”

— L.J. Shen

444. “To burn under your fingertips is to come alive.”

— L.J. Shen

445. “Love. Four letters can’t cover what I feel for Daria Followhill. They seem too trivial, too small, too overused.”

— L.J. Shen

446. “We’d helped each other tear down the walls, and I hoped, with every fiber of my body, that what we’d find underneath them wasn’t rotten.”

— L.J. Shen

447. “I grabbed the bun on top of my head and cut it, throwing it to the sink and turning on the water with the elastic band still on.”

— L.J. Shen

448. “I did as I was told, smoothing my hand across the lush fabric of the Moonflower. I’d named the dress design after the white flower, which looked like a long dress midtwirl when it opened. But there was a catch that made me insist on the name – the moonflower only opened at night. It blossomed in the dark. Sven had said to call it something that reminded me of myself. Nothing reminded me of myself more than blossoming in the arms of darkness.”

— L.J. Shen

449. “I couldn’t believe I was talking to my dad about this, of all people. It was like taking dating advice from Dracula.”

— L.J. Shen

450. “I’m planning an invasion of California with my Canadian missile.”

— L.J. Shen