Top 100 Riley Sager Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “Pain equals clarity. Clarity equals survival.”

— Riley Sager

52. “Sometimes you can’t simultaneously be smart, brave, and careful. Sometimes you need to choose one.”

— Riley Sager

53. “There’s safety in numbers, yes, but also uncertainty.”

— Riley Sager

54. “There needs to be a counterpoint. Something dark. Or bitter. Or sour. Unsweetened chocolate. Cardamom and cinnamon. Lemon and lime. They cut through all the sugar, taming it just enough so that when you do taste the sweetness, you appreciate it all the more.”

— Riley Sager

55. “I’m surprised, until I notice her wan and tired appearance.”

— Riley Sager

56. “I take a deep breath, trying to collect my thoughts. But they’re an unruly, unreliable bunch. My skull feels like a snow globe recently shaken, swirling with important bits of information that have yet to land. And I can’t grasp.”

— Riley Sager

57. “She’s capable of so little yet accused of so much, and I remain torn between wanting to protect her and the urge to suspect her.”

— Riley Sager

58. “That’s the real reason I love the book so much. It’s the happy ending Jane deserved. Not the grim one she in all likelihood received.”

— Riley Sager

59. “My future is quite literally a blank canvas, waiting for me to fill it.”

— Riley Sager

60. “I was friendly but friendless. Approachable yet purposefully aloof. I saw no point in getting too close with anyone.”

— Riley Sager

61. “Just because I’m smoking hot doesn’t make me illiterate. Hot girls read.”

— Riley Sager

62. “Men like him gobbled up all they could, leaving nothing for everyone else.”

— Riley Sager

63. “A spoonful of sugar, Quinn, he’d say. The song doesn’t lie.”

— Riley Sager

64. “Because they take our world and improve upon it,” Charlie says. “Movies are magical that way. Everything is magnified. The colors are brighter. The shadows are darker. The action more violent and the love affairs more passionate. People break out into song. Or they used to. The emotions – love, hate, fear, laughter – are all bigger. And the people! All those beautiful faces in full close-up. So beautiful it’s hard to look away.”

— Riley Sager

65. “You know there’s no such thing as ghosts, right?” I said. “You’re wrong.” Maggie slid deeper under the covers. “I’ve seen them.”

— Riley Sager

66. “You strike me as a gentle soul,” she says. I’ve never thought of myself as gentle. Fragile is more like it. Prone to bruising.”

— Riley Sager

67. “And if Charlie’s learned anything from the movies, it’s that few things are more dangerous than someone with nothing to lose.”

— Riley Sager

68. “I try to pretend I’m not as lonely as I feel.”

— Riley Sager

69. “I know, that’s what all deaths feel like. The person is there and then they’re not and you have to adjust to life without them.”

— Riley Sager

70. “He once told me our relationship was like a rose. Beautiful, yes, but it came with thorns. I liked it to the weather. It was always changing. Icy seasons. Warm spells. Months when we’d talk almost every day and long sections of radio silence.”

— Riley Sager

71. “Finally, I cry for all the versions of myself that have existed through the years. Confused five-year-old. Sullen child of divorce. Furious nine-year-old. Inquisitive me. Defiant me. Dutiful me. So many incarnations, each one seeking answers, leading me to right here, to right now, to a potential truth I have no idea how to handle.”

— Riley Sager

72. “This time a faint cold spot blunts the heat of her gaze. Curiosity, left unarticulated.”

— Riley Sager

73. “You’re never alone when there’s a book,′ she used to say. ‘Never ever.”

— Riley Sager

74. “I’d also like to take a moment to salute the many caregivers out there working in hospitals, nursing homes, and in patients’ houses. These often-unsung heroes heal the sick and comfort the suffering on a daily basis, going about their work with diligence, dignity, and pride. You care. Thank you.”

— Riley Sager

75. “What none of them understand is that the point of the game isn’t to fool others with a lie. The goal is to trick them by telling the truth.”

— Riley Sager

76. “I’m the moth that got careless with the flame. Now I’m engulfed.”

— Riley Sager

77. “Sometimes, Mags, a couple can go through something so terrible that not even love can fix it.”

— Riley Sager

78. “There’s more to the sentence, the unspoken part left dangling like an autumn leaf. I know what it is, though. Something vaguely sexist and patronizing. I get it all the time. Constant questions that would never be posed to a man. Am I skilled enough? Strong enough? Capable enough?”

— Riley Sager

79. “Most of the superheroes start off as regular people just like us. Nerdy and awkward. But something happens that makes these average people realize they’re stronger than they thought. Then they believe they can do anything. And what they choose to do is help people.”

— Riley Sager

80. “The only differences here are that Boone isn’t a local, my heart’s too shattered to melt, and there’s no such thing as happily ever after. There’s only happy for a short period of time before everything falls apart.”

— Riley Sager

81. “Think. That’s what will get me out of this mess. Not panicking. Panic only breeds more panic.”

— Riley Sager

82. “Movies are like life,” she finally says. “Only better.”

— Riley Sager

83. “Even though a mere minute in her company has left me exhausted, I follow.”

— Riley Sager

84. “It must have happened right after I left for work. She either tripped or lost her balance. A freak accident.”

— Riley Sager

85. “That by reading, whole worlds could be explored without ever leaving home. My father, on the other hand, warned me to get used to it. “It’s our lot in life, Kit-Kat,” he told me. “People like us toil. The rich bastards running everything make sure of that.”

— Riley Sager

86. “That’s the tricky thing about movies. They can be wonderful and beautiful and amazing. But they’re not like life, which is wonderful, beautiful, and amazing in a different way.”

— Riley Sager

87. “If I feel sadness, it’s the same simmering grief I always experience. The kind of pain I long ago learned to love with.”

— Riley Sager

88. “God, she must think I’m insane. I’d think the same thing if I didn’t know the reasons behind my recklessness.”

— Riley Sager

89. “Ladies shouldn’t play pool,” she once told me. “Lucky for me I’m not a lady,” I replied.”

— Riley Sager

90. “I’m a blogger?” It comes out sounding like a question. Like I have no clue what I am.”

— Riley Sager

91. “I want Sam to witness firsthand the formula behind baking and to experience its safety; I want her to see how it’s helped me become more than just a girl screaming through the woods away from Pine Cottage.”

— Riley Sager

92. “There’s something energizing about getting what you want, even if that something is shame.”

— Riley Sager

93. “I long for the quiet camaraderie only a library can provide.”

— Riley Sager

94. “She’s fascinating in the same way tornadoes are fascinating. You want to see how much they’re going to spin.”

— Riley Sager

95. “On the TV is a clip of President Reagan giving a speech about the economy.”

— Riley Sager

96. “I go to my father’s desk, getting uncomfortable flashbacks to when Allie and I emptied my father’s apartment a week after his death. It was rough. The entire place smelled like him – a soothing combo of wool, aftershave and old books. Every item dropped into a cardboard box felt as though a part of his existence was being locked away where no one could see it. Every tattered cardigan. Each worn-edged book. I was erasing my father piece by piece, and it gutted me.”

— Riley Sager

97. “Women need to do that, you know. Look out for each other. There’s a special place in hell for those who don’t.”

— Riley Sager

98. “I’m sure someone would say it’s my own damn fault. That it was my responsibility to build an emergency fund. At least three months’ salary, the experts say. I would love to backhand whoever came up with that number. They clearly never had a job with take-home pay that barely covers rent, food, and utilities. Because here’s the thing about being poor-most people don’t understand it unless they’ve been there themselves.”

— Riley Sager

99. “They, too, had a choice – to continue fighting a battle they had no chance of winning or to willingly wrap themselves in the sweet embrace of nothingness.”

— Riley Sager

100. “I’m going to be a police detective like my uncle.” she says. “Why write about crimes when you can solve them in real life?”

— Riley Sager