Top 100 Riley Sager Quotes (2025 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. “That girl is gone now, replaced by someone wiser and harder but no less hopeful.”

— Riley Sager

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

— Riley Sager

57. “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

58. “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

59. “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

60. “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

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

— Riley Sager

62. “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

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

— Riley Sager

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

— Riley Sager

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

— Riley Sager

66. “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

67. “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

68. “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

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

— Riley Sager

70. “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

71. “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

72. “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

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

— Riley Sager

74. “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

75. “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

76. “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

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

— Riley Sager

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

— Riley Sager

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

— Riley Sager

80. “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

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

— Riley Sager

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

— Riley Sager

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

— Riley Sager

84. “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

85. “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

86. “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

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

— Riley Sager

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

— Riley Sager

89. “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

90. “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

91. “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

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

— Riley Sager

93. “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

94. “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

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

— Riley Sager

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

— Riley Sager

97. “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

98. “They’ve never waited for their paycheck to be directly deposited at the stroke of midnight because their wallet is empty and their credit cards are maxed and they desperately need to pay for gas. And food. And a prescription that’s gone unfilled for an entire week.”

— Riley Sager

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

— Riley Sager

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

— Riley Sager