Top 120 Riley Sager Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “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

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

— Riley Sager

53. “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

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

— Riley Sager

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

— Riley Sager

56. “It’s a beautiful afternoon. Mid-sixties, sunny and clear. It reminds me of my childhood. Of pumpkins and piles of leaves and trick-or-treating.”

— Riley Sager

57. “That can be said of certain places. The closer you get to them, the uglier they become.”

— Riley Sager

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

— Riley Sager

59. “A saying I’d heard long ago came to mind: When you stare into the abyss, the abyss also stares into you.”

— Riley Sager

60. “Pain equals clarity. Clarity equals survival.”

— Riley Sager

61. “I make no attempts to disguise my scars. I just pretend they don’t exist.”

— Riley Sager

62. “By the front door is a table normally used for mail and car keys. On it sits a single sheet of paper bearing six typed lines. Holding my breath, I pick it up and begin to read. At sixty-nine, Virginia Hope Wrote her nurse this little note Thank you, dear, for saving me Now it’s time to let you be I take my leave, walking tall Knowing that I fooled them all.”

— Riley Sager

63. “Because that’s how I feel. Like I’m perched on the edge of a great chasm, waiting for the slightest breeze to shove me screaming into it.”

— Riley Sager

64. “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

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

— Riley Sager

66. “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

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

— Riley Sager

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

— Riley Sager

69. “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

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

— Riley Sager

71. “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

72. “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

73. “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

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

— Riley Sager

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

— Riley Sager

76. “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

77. “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

78. “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

79. “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

80. “One time is an anomaly. Two times is a coincidence. Three times is proof.”

— Riley Sager

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

— Riley Sager

82. “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

83. “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

84. “Every house has a story to tell and a secret to share.”

— Riley Sager

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

— Riley Sager

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

— Riley Sager

87. “The world is often brutal and cruel, and it only seems to get harder as time marches forward. The pressures and dangers kids face today are so much worse than when I was that age.”

— Riley Sager

88. “Lenora, the only one left, claimed to have had nothing to do with it.”

— Riley Sager

89. “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

90. “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

91. “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

92. “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

93. “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

94. “Suspicion has a way of breaking through even the strongest barriers.”

— Riley Sager

95. “But fiction can be an escape, which is why we need idealized versions of New York City. It balances out the crowded, gritty, heartbreaking real thing.”

— Riley Sager

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

— Riley Sager

97. “Why bother if you’re not going to give it your all?”

— Riley Sager

98. “Revenge is fleeting. Vengeance lasts a lifetime.”

— Riley Sager

99. “Few things in life are more disappointing than knowing your parents aren’t being honest with you.”

— Riley Sager

100. “Because here’s the thing about details – they can also be a distraction. Add too many and it obscures the brutal truth about a situation. They become the gaudy necklace that hides the tracheotomy scar.”

— Riley Sager