Top 250 Stephanie Perkins Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “Would you rather be great at something you like, or just okay at something you love?”

— Stephanie Perkins

202. “I don’t know what I believe. I guess that makes me a Christmas Tree Agnostic.”

— Stephanie Perkins

203. “And it didn’t matter how many songs or poems had already been written about them, because whenever he thought about the girl, the stars shone brighter. As if she were the one keeping them illuminated.”

— Stephanie Perkins

204. “Why doesn’t he have the same effect on them that he has on me? Don’t they see him?”

— Stephanie Perkins

205. “The way he looked at you? He wasn’t distracted. He was consumed.”

— Stephanie Perkins

206. “But we stayed together, because I don’t know why. Maybe because we though we should be in love. At least I did. I wanted to be in love.”

— Stephanie Perkins

207. “I don’t care about anything. But I care about you.”

— Stephanie Perkins

208. “If you like someone, you should have to make an effort.”

— Stephanie Perkins

209. “You know what’s the strangest thing about tonight? Tonight, being an astoundingly strange night?” “What’s that?” “That you still don’t realize I’m willing to do anything, anything” – he gestured in a full circle around them – “to stay in your company. You don’t need to pay me.”

— Stephanie Perkins

210. “You can’t undo loss. You can’t unmake a mistake.”

— Stephanie Perkins

211. “It’s strange. Home. How I could wish for it for so long, only to come back and find it gone. To be here, in my technical house, and discover that home is now someplace different.”

— Stephanie Perkins

212. “Los ojos marrones son alucinantes en algunas personas y, en otras, terriblemente vulgares.”

— Stephanie Perkins

213. “We just keep each other company. My breath. His breath. My breath. His breath. I could never tell him, but it’s true. This is home. The two of us.”

— Stephanie Perkins

214. “The first thing I notice is his hair – it’s the first thing I notice about anyone. It’s dark brown and messy and somehow both long and short at the same time. I think of the Beatles, since I’ve just seen them in Meredith’s room. It’s artist’s hair. Musician hair. I-pretend-I-don’t-care-but-I-really-do hair.”

— Stephanie Perkins

215. “Heroism is overrated, and bravery often accompanies stupidity.”

— Stephanie Perkins

216. “I’ve taken you this far. I can take you that much farther.”

— Stephanie Perkins

217. “I scan the dark room, through the thrashing bodies of disillusioned Parisian youth, getting their anger out with a healthy dose of French punk rock.”

— Stephanie Perkins

218. “It’s about isolation and loneliness, but it’s also about friendship. Being exactly what the other person needs.”

— Stephanie Perkins

219. “I keep my eyes on his bedspread – blue-and-white plaid, very male – and try to remember how Isla-of-the-past would have fainted if she could see Isla-of-the-present.”

— Stephanie Perkins

220. “Girls were supposed to be happy that someone wanted them, as though they were kittens in a basket, and any left by day’s end would be drowned in the pond.”

— Stephanie Perkins

221. “I wanted to be your partner the first day.”

— Stephanie Perkins

222. “Josh: St. Clair and Anna are one of those couples that seem like they were made for each other. Instant friendship, instant chemistry. He was obsessed with her from the moment they met. She was the only thing he ever wanted to talk about. Still is, actually.”

— Stephanie Perkins

223. “I’m walking you home. It’s late. And it’s pouring.”

— Stephanie Perkins

224. “Holy crap. I just slept with St. Clair.”

— Stephanie Perkins

225. “Thanks. I forgot how to flip off the English. I’ll use the correct hand gesture next time.”

— Stephanie Perkins

226. “Is it weird being in Omaha?” Simini asked her. “Now that everybody’s left?” “It’s like walking through the mall after it closes,” Mags said.”

— Stephanie Perkins

227. “Cricket weaves easily around the other customers as if we’re the only two people in the store. The music over the.”

— Stephanie Perkins

228. “Long-distance relationships are all about patience.”

— Stephanie Perkins

229. “You’ve built up this idea about me, this ideal, but I’m not that person. I’m not perfect. I am far from perfect. I’m not worth such a beautiful story.”

— Stephanie Perkins

230. “At least I’m not the only one who finds change difficult.”

— Stephanie Perkins

231. “It’s the beginning of everything.” I look back up. He’s smiling. “Welcome to Paris, Anna. I’m glad you’ve come.”

— Stephanie Perkins

232. “A living corpse is better than a dying heart.”

— Stephanie Perkins

233. “Here books totter in wobbly stacks, fall from the seats of chairs, and spill from sagging shelves. There are cardboard boxes overflowing with books, and a black cat naps beside a pile on the stairs.”

— Stephanie Perkins

234. “They had me next to some horrible couple in matching Hawaiian shirts. There’s no reason to suffer this flight alone when we can suffer it together.”

— Stephanie Perkins

235. “Some things just don’t translate between cultures.”

— Stephanie Perkins

236. “I know he is smiling, and my heart races.”

— Stephanie Perkins

237. “How did anyone know anything before the internet?” “Our parents were idiots.”

— Stephanie Perkins

238. “If I die out there? I’d be honored if you ate my body.” “I would never let a bear get to your body first.”

— Stephanie Perkins

239. “Music is so powerful and mysterious because it can bring up emotions you’ve buried inside of you. Dancing is a way to experience these emotions and release them so they don’t get stuck in your throat or stomach or chest.”

— Stephanie Perkins

240. “It is the mature thing to say, which is something I think about too often at the age of seventeen. I guess that’s what happens when you’re forced to grow up too early.”

— Stephanie Perkins

241. “You can tell a lot about a person by looking at the state of their surroundings.”

— Stephanie Perkins

242. “Maybe it was okay to imagine greater things. Maybe it was all for me, if I wanted it. With dawn of the new year on the horizon, I resolved to exert my will on the world.”

— Stephanie Perkins

243. “Rules make people feel safe. But they can turn into judgments. Condemnation is easy, Vaughn. The harder choice is love, and it’s one my dad makes every day.”

— Stephanie Perkins

244. “Some habits of friendship were like muscle memory, rising up even when everything else had changed. I know our jokes, our rhythms, the choreography of our friendship. But that didn’t take away what we were now.”

— Stephanie Perkins

245. “It is this author’s considered opinion that people talk entirely too much. Words, which should be used to communicate, are often used for the exact opposite purpose.”

— Stephanie Perkins

246. “Someday, their story would be a chapter in one of those sleazy, mass-market, true-crime paperbacks that were shelved in the cobwebbed corners of used bookstores – the types of paperbacks that boasted about the number of crime-scene photographs inside.”

— Stephanie Perkins

247. “I passed worried families, their hands clutched in front of them, sweaters balled up over their fists to cover themselves. We became protective at the fist sign of grief, hunching in, shielding our most vulnerable parts.”

— Stephanie Perkins

248. “People were talking about SATs and college applications and summer internships. Everything seemed to be speeding up, and everything seemed to be gathering momentum, ready to go shooting off into the future on carefully plotted trajectories, while Gracie was still struggling to get her bearings.”

— Stephanie Perkins

249. “I think if you can find the right food to connect yourself to a happier time, or a happier version of yourself, it can help you remember. Help you get back to who you were when you were happy. It can change everything.”

— Stephanie Perkins

250. “Was he bruised beyond recognition? Or were his injuries the worse kind, the ones that hid under the surface of the skin, giving false hope?”

— Stephanie Perkins