Emily Giffin Quotes

I miss him in so many ways, but right now I miss him in the way you always miss someone when you're single among a room full of couples.

~ Emily Giffin

...love is the sum of our choices, the strength of our commitments, the ties that bind us together.

~ Emily Giffin

I miss us too. I always have and I probably always will. Sometimes there are no happy endings. No matter what, I'll be losing something, someone. But maybe that's what it all comes down to. Love, not as a surge of passion, but as a choice to commit to something, someone, no matter what obstacles or temptations stand in the way. And maybe making that choice again and again, day in and day out, year after year,says more about love than never having a choice to make at all.

~ Emily Giffin

I love him wholly and unconditionally and without reservation. I love him enough to sacrifice a friendship. I love him enough to accept my own happiness and use it, in turn, to make him happy back.

~ Emily Giffin

But I have learned that you make your own happiness, that part of going for what you want means losing something else. And when the stakes are high, the losses can be that much greater.

~ Emily Giffin

Love and friendship. They are what make us who we are, and what can change us, if we let them.

~ Emily Giffin

Songs and smells will bring you back to a moment in time more than anything else. It's amazing how much can be conjured with a few notes of a song or a solitary whiff of a room. A song you didn't even pay attention to at the time, a place that you didn't even know had a particular smell. I wonder what will someday bring back Dex and our few months together. Maybe the sound of Dido's voice. Maybe the scent of the Aveda shampoo I've been using all summer.

~ Emily Giffin

Life's not black-and-white. Sometimes the ends justifies the means.

~ Emily Giffin

His words are like the sound of a needle dragging across a record. A sinking, sickening feeling washes over me. This is why you should never, ever get your hopes up. This is why you should see the glass as half empty. So, when the whole things spills, you aren't as devastated.

~ Emily Giffin

We are one of those couples i used to watch, thinking to myself that I'd never be on the inside of something so special. I remember reassuring myself that it probably looked nicer than it actually was, I am happy to be wrong about that.

~ Emily Giffin

You see yourself as very average, ordinary. And there is nothing ordinary about you, Rachel. (Something Borrowed)

~ Emily Giffin

I think of how life takes unexpected twists and turns, sometimes through sheer happenstance, sometimes through calculated decisions. In the end, it can all be called fate, but to me, it is more a matter of faith.

~ Emily Giffin

People generally didn't cheat in good relationships.

~ Emily Giffin

I think of how each person in a marriage owes it to the other to find individual happiness, even in a shared life. That this is the only way to grow together, instead of apart.

~ Emily Giffin

I still think I love him more. It's one of those things you never know for certain because there's no way to enter all the relationship data in a computer and have it spit out a definitive answer. You can't quantify love, and if you try, you wind up focusing on misleading factors.

~ Emily Giffin

I was aware that we were both silently making those inevitable comparisons, putting our relationship in context. She is more this and less that. He is better or worse in these ways. It is human nature to do this--unless its your first relationship, which might be the very reason that your first relationship feels special and remains forever sacred. But the older you get, the more cynical you become, and the more complicated and convoluted the exercise is. You begin to realize that nothing is perfect, that there are trade-offs and sacrifices. The worst is when someone in your past trumps the person in the present, and you think to yourself: if I'd known this, then maybe I wouldn't have let him go.

~ Emily Giffin

I spend the rest of the afternoon trying to explain to Zoe one of the very saddest notions in love and life: sometimes the timing is wrong--and sometimes you realize the heart of the matter way to late in the game.

~ Emily Giffin

Despite the fact that I have no regrets about how things turned out in my life, I still can't help wanting to understand my intense relationship with Leo, as well as that turbulent time between adolescence and adulthood when everything feels raw and invigorating and scary-and why those feelings are all coming back to me now.

~ Emily Giffin

I decided that giving a girl a ring when you're not in a serious relationship is sort of like giving a guy a blow job when you have no real feelings for him. It makes everything feel a little cheap.It cheapens the giver and the recipient.

~ Emily Giffin

The person who wants out of the relationship always gets her way.

~ Emily Giffin

But I have learned that you can't just create your own timetable and will it to come true.

~ Emily Giffin

But now we have time. Endless time stretches before us.

~ Emily Giffin

And like a favorite old movie, sometimes the sameness in a friend is what you like the most about her.

~ Emily Giffin

As everyone applauds and sips champagne, I smile back at Rachel, thinking she got it just right. Love and friendship. They are what makes us who we are and what can change us, if we let them.

~ Emily Giffin

It occurs to me that she is not unique--that all women compare lives. We are aware of whose husband works more, who helps more around the house, who makes more money, who is having more sex. We compare our children, taking note of who is sleeping through the night, eating their vegetables, minding their manners, getting into the right schools. We know who keeps the best house, throws the best parties, cooks the best meals, has the best tennis game. We know who among us is the smartest, has the fewest lines around her eyes, has the best figure--whether naturally or artificially. We are aware of who works full-time, who stays at home with the kids, who manages to do it all and make it look easy, who shops and lunches while the nanny does it all. We digest it all and then discuss with our friends. Comparing and then confiding; it is what women do.The difference, I think, lies in why we do it. Are we doing it to gauge our own life and reassure ourselves that we fall within the realm of normal? Or are we being competitive, relishing others' shortcomings so that we can win, if only by default?

~ Emily Giffin

Why do I need to have reasons? When someone decides to have a baby, people don't go around asking what her reasons are.

~ Emily Giffin

I nod, thinking of how difficult marriage can be, how much effort is required to sustain a feeling between two people - a feeling that you can't imagine will ever fade in the beginning when everything comes so easily. I think of how each person in a marriage owes it to the other to find individual happiness, even in a shared life. That is the only real way to grow together, instead of apart.

~ Emily Giffin

I had seen the light, come to believe that a wedding should be about a feeling between two people, not a show for the masses...It was a magical, romantic evening, and although I occasionally wish I had worn a slightly fancier dress, and that Nick and I had danced on our wedding night, I have no real regrets about the way we chose to do things.

~ Emily Giffin

The mind-blowing, ridiculous sex which was the stuff of both poetry and porn - so unlike anything else I had ever experienced before.

~ Emily Giffin

My work has often been described as “chick lit” and for the most part the term doesn’t bother me. I think it simply signals to readers that the book is about women, written for women (although many men enjoy my books), about issues that concern women (relationships, careers, etc.) The only thing that bothers me is when the label is used disparagingly, to imply that all chick lit is, by definition, superficial, beach-read fluff because I believe that this is akin to saying that all women are devoid of substance and the issues that concern us, are fundamentally trivial ones. And I take issue with that.

~ Emily Giffin

a bit of a dirty fighter, quick with cutting words that he later regrets and doesn't really mean. Then again, I wonder if there isn't always a grain of truth in them, somewhere

~ Emily Giffin

Being married cuts on your freedom. Having a husband or a relationship at all puts constraints on you. by Michael.

~ Emily Giffin

Buried beneath disappointment and fear, anger and pride, I just might find it in my heart to forgive.

~ Emily Giffin

No second chances. It's not so much about morality, but about my inability to forgive. I am a champion grudge holder, and I don't think I could change this about myself even if I wanted to.

~ Emily Giffin

It was about grace, she decides, something that has been missing from her own life. ... She wants to be the kind of person who can bestow unearned kindness on another, replace bitterness with empathy, forgive only for the sake of forgiving.

~ Emily Giffin

...recognizing that there is more heartbreak in continuous disappointment than a void...

~ Emily Giffin

In days that follow, I discover that anger is easier to handle than grief.

~ Emily Giffin

Even if we no longer have much in common, we would have always had the past, which, in some ways, is just as important as the present or future. It is where we come from, what makes us who we are.

~ Emily Giffin

Although I'm sure there are plenty of tall, gorgeous, life-of-the-party guys who are also true to their wives, I happen to believe that a disproportionate number of them are cheaters.

~ Emily Giffin

his unwavering confidence - but now, it feels like a brand of indifference

~ Emily Giffin