Top 500 Taylor Jenkins Reid Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “Don’t be so tied up trying to do the right thing when the smart thing is so painfully clear.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

252. “We are lying in bed. We are naked. We are tangled in sheets, covered in sweat. We lie in each other’s arms and I am reminded of all of the other times we lay next to each other, catching our breath side by side, limbs intertwined.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

253. “Letting people love you and care for you is part of how you love and care for them.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

254. “I don’t feel regret for the things I’ve done – at least, not the things you might expect – despite how hard they may have been or how repugnant they may seem in the cold light of day.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

255. “I switched to English, not wanting to speak Spanish anymore, not liking how strange it sounded coming out of my own mouth. “I’m Cuban,” I said to her. “I’ve spoken Spanish my entire life.” That wasn’t true, though. I hadn’t spoken it in years.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

256. “You made my life worth living. I promise you I am going to do something with it.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

257. “My husband believed I might die. And he didn’t so much as even call the concierge. A switch flipped in me. I knew, right there and then, I needed to get away from this person. He wasn’t gonna kill me but he would let me die.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

258. “It’s as if a gorgeous, delicate bird has just flown to me and sat directly on my shoulder, and if I don’t make the exact right move, it might fly away.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

259. “Would I have clung to his every word so tightly if his advice felt unlimited?”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

260. “There’s only so long you can live your life while it’s being dictated to you by somebody else, you understand? And I don’t care how much money is in it for me, I’m not somebody’s lackey. I’m not some indentured servant. I’m a person.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

261. “There was something vaguely midwestern about him, not so much in how he looked but in the way he approached people, with kindness first, then strength.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

262. “Oh I know the whole world prefers a woman who doesn’t know her power, but I’m sick of all that.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

263. “The sun rises the next day after mothers lose their babies, after men lose their wives, after countries lose wars. The sun will rise no matter what pain we encounter. No matter how much we believe the world to be over, the sun will rise. So you can’t go around assessing love by whether or not the sun rises. The sun doesn’t care about love. It just cares about rising.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

264. “I am afraid of losing. I am afraid of how it will look to the world. I’m afraid of this match being the last match my father ever sees me play. I am afraid of ending this all on a loss. I am afraid of so much.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

265. “Knowing you did the right thing doesn’t mean you’re happy about it.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

266. “It makes you want to cry, the simplicity of it, the smallness of it. You have worked so hard for a life so grand. And now all you want are the smallest freedoms. The daily peace of loving plainly.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

267. “You think things are meant to be?” I ask her. For some reason, I think I’ll feel better if things are meant to be. It gets me off the hook, doesn’t it? If things are meant to be, it means I don’t have to worry so much about consequences and mistakes. I can take my hands off the wheel. Believing in fate is like living on cruise control.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

268. “I’m glad you have no one left. I’m glad there’s no one alive to love you.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

269. “You should be predictable and then do something unpredictable, and they’ll love you forever.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

270. “I have been reeling because I failed. Because I picked the wrong guy for me. Because I entered the wrong marriage. Because the truth is that at the age of thirty-five, I have yet to love someone enough to sacrifice for them. I’ve yet to open my heart enough to let someone in that much.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

271. “Why take a chance on another book when I already know I like this one?”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

272. “What I actually remember most about her is the emptiness she left behind. There was this sense, within the house, that there used to be someone else here. But now it was just my father and me.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

273. “Instead, Nina Riva stood on the edge of the cliff she’d never wanted, and looked out onto the water she wished was closer, and for the first time in her quiet life, screamed into the wind.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

274. “She likes to be cavalier about things that would change other people’s lives. Isn’t that the very definition of power? Watching people kill themselves over something that means nothing to you?”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

275. “And she said, “A part of me wishes you wanted kids, because my kids make me so happy. But... I think in order to be happy like I’m happy, you need different things. And I want you to have whatever those things are.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

276. “She knew that childhood is made up of days magnificent and mundane. And this had been a magnificent day for all of them.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

277. “I wanted to give her a lot of things. I wanted what I had be hers. I wondered if this was what it felt like to love someone.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

278. “Im not perfect. I’ll never be perfect. I don’t expect anything to be perfect. But things don’t have to be perfect to be strong.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

279. “Our parents live inside us, whether they stick around or not... They express themselves through us in the way we hold a pen or shrug our shoulders, in the way we raise our eyebrow. Our heritage lingers in our blood.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

280. “Por eso es peligroso amar a la persona equivocada, amar a quien no lo merece. Tienes que estar con alguien que se merezca tu fe y tienes que ser merecedor de la fe de alguien. Eso es algo sagrado.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

281. “But that’s a luxury. You can do that when you’re rich and famous. You can decide that wealth and renown are worthless when you have them. Back then, I still thought I had all the time I needed to do everything I wanted. That if I just played my cards right, I could have it all.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

282. “And I can’t say that, either. I have loved you every single day.” “You married someone else.” “I married him because he helped me forget you,” I said. “Not because I stopped loving you.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

283. “Music can dig, you know? It can take a shovel to your chest and just start digging until it hits something.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

284. “I would sometimes choose to just go along with what he wanted or what he said so that I didn’t cause a fight. And somewhere along the way, I started to feel like I couldn’t be honest.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

285. “Art doesn’t owe anything to anyone. Songs are about how it felt, not the facts. Self-expression is about what it feels to live, not whether you had 5he right to claim any emotion at any time.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

286. “I don’t need perfect love and I don’t need a perfect husband and I don’t need perfect kids and a perfect life and all that. I want mine. I want my love, my husband, my kids, my life. I’m not perfect. I’ll never be perfect. I don’t expect anything to be perfect, but things don’t have to be perfect to be strong.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

287. “There’s this peace that comes with knowing you have a person in the world who would do anything for you, that you would do anything for.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

288. “Camila said to me, “I wish Billy didn’t love anyone else. But do you know what I decided a long time ago? I decided I don’t need perfect love and I don’t need a perfect husband and I don’t need perfect kids and a perfect life and all that. I want mine. I want my love, my husband, my kids, my life.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

289. “Don had pushed me down the stairs nine days before. Even as I say it all these years later, I feel the need to defend him. To say that it wasn’t as bad as it sounds. That we were toward the bottom of the stairs, and he gave me a shove that bumped me down about four steps and onto the floor.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

290. “This beautiful thing you’ve been happy to simply appreciate, well, now it’s yours to own.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

291. “I’m saying that when you really love someone, sometimes the things they need may hurt you, and some people are worth hurting for.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

292. “It takes everything I have not to take it back, not to apologize profusely. My mother raised me to be polite, to be demure. I have long operated under the idea that civility is subservience. But it hasn’t gotten me very far, that type of kindness. The world respects people who think they should be running it. I’ve never understood that, but I’m done fighting it.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

293. “If you are heartbroken right now, then I feel for you deeply,” Evelyn says. “That I have the utmost respect for. That’s the sort of thing that can split a person in two. But I wasn’t heartbroken when Don left me. I simply felt like my marriage had failed. And those are very different things.” When Evelyn says this, I stop my pen in place. I look up at her. And I wonder why I needed Evelyn to tell me that. I wonder why that sort of distinction has never crossed my mind before.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

294. “I blame pheromones, ultimately.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

295. “I love you,” she said. “I love you, too,” I whispered into her ear. “I love you more than anything else in the entire world.” “It’s not wrong,” Celia said. “It shouldn’t be wrong, to love you. How can it be wrong?” “It’s not wrong, sweetheart. It’s not,” I said. “They’re wrong.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

296. “One of the great injustices of this rigged world we live in is that women are considered to be depleting with age and men are somehow deepening.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

297. “Some marriages aren’t really that great. Some loves aren’t all-encompassing. Sometimes you separate because you weren’t that good together to begin with. Sometimes divorce isn’t an earth-shattering loss. Sometimes it’s just two people waking up out of a fog.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

298. “Marriage is about commitment. It’s about loyalty. It’s not about happiness. Happiness is secondary. And ultimately, marriage is about children.” She gives me a knowing look. “If you had a baby, no matter how unhappy you were together, you’d have stayed together. Children bind you. They connect you. That’s what marriage is about.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

299. “I think you have to have faith in people before they earn it. Otherwise it’s not faith, right?”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid

300. “Hice que fuera mitad y mitad. Que es una de las peores cosas que puedes hacerle a alguien a quien quieres: darle apenas lo suficiente para que se quede contigo a pesar de tantos malos momentos.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid