Top 100 Riley Sager Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “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

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

— Riley Sager

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

— Riley Sager

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

— Riley Sager

55. “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

56. “That girl is gone now, replaced by someone wiser and harder but no less hopeful.”

— Riley Sager

57. “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

58. “Alcoholism is an occupational hazard of being an actor, of being a widow, and of being alone. And I’m all three.”

— Riley Sager

59. “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

60. “When you stare into the abyss, the abyss also stares into you.”

— Riley Sager

61. “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

62. “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

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

— Riley Sager

64. “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

65. “Boys can break your heart and betray you, but not in the same stinging way girls can.”

— Riley Sager

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

— Riley Sager

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

— Riley Sager

68. “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

69. “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

70. “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

71. “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

72. “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

73. “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

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

— Riley Sager

75. “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

76. “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

77. “What I do recall is colored by what’s in the Book. Instead of memories, I have excerpts. It’s like looking at a photograph of a photograph. The framing is off. The colors are dulled. The image is slightly dark.”

— Riley Sager

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

— Riley Sager

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

— Riley Sager

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

— Riley Sager

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

— Riley Sager

82. “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

83. “But somehow we screamed louder, ran faster, fought harder. We survived.”

— Riley Sager

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

— Riley Sager

85. “Life has failed her time and time again. The movies have never let her down.”

— Riley Sager

86. “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

87. “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

88. “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

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

— 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. “But that’s not what you’re most curious about, is it? You want to know if I’m as evil as everyone says I am. The answer is no. And yes.”

— Riley Sager

93. “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

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

— Riley Sager

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

— Riley Sager

96. “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

97. “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

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

— Riley Sager

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

— Riley Sager

100. “The elevator resembles a birdcage. The tall, ornate kind – all thin bars and gilded exterior. I even think of birds as I step inside. Exotic and bright and lush. Everything I’m not.”

— Riley Sager