• “I need to work on my confidence. Suffice it to say, it’s taken a beating recently. Although why pretend it was ever really soaring?” (4). A MOOD
  • Why her? Well, the obvious answer is she’s a distant relative of her late husband. But that seems too overdone at this point.
  • The anxiety I would feel over doing an interview with someone like this. Holy shit. I used to work as a journalist and even doing an interview with a person in town was nerve-wracking.
  • “Isn’t that the very definition of power? Watching people kill themselves over something that means nothing to you?” (28). Evelyn is kind of power hungry isn’t she?
  • Ah, well the perfect ones always seem to have at least one flaw. DIVORCE IS A RIGHT AND ANYONE WHO THINKS OTHERWISE IS AN IDIOT. Also, I hate Don a lot.
  • Ah I was wondering who Evelyn Hugo’s sapphic love interest was. I’ve seen people talk about it online and honestly their relationship is NO letdown.
  • “People think intimacy is about sex. But intimacy is about truth.” (113)
  • I think people might die of boredom because of all the quotes I’m just using instead of actually writing thoughts…
  • Okay but Evelyn ends up marrying Celia’s older brother???? UM.
  • Honestly men are pigs. LIKE WHY DO YOU HAVE TO BE SO FUCKING TERRIBLE? That is what this book has communicated to me a far. Except for you, Harry dear.
  • “I’m just saying it’s not so great being loved for something you didn’t do.”(117)
  • “You wonder what it must be like to be a man, to be so confident that the final say is yours.” (181)
  • Evelyn and Celia talked for an HOUR before going to sleep I’m in tears
  • “I think I welcomed the excuse not to go back to my own life for a little while.” (223). This is a 2018 mood/bibliophile mood.
  • Holy hell. What did Evelyn do? Monique wants to kill her??
  • “No medium can capture what it’s like to be in someone else’s presence.” (227)
  • Yessssss I love Evelyn and Celia together so much!!! They’re so pure!
  • “I want you to be happy and it appears I have to reward you for doing things in your own favor.” (228). Um this is me and taking showers.
  • “Accepting something is true isn’t the same as thinking that it is just.” (238)
  • “It’s always been fascinating to me how things can be simultaneously true and false, how people can be good and bad all in one, how someone can love you in a way that is beautifully selfless while serving themselves ruthlessly.” (252)
  • “Solveable problems aren’t really problems, are they?” (253). I mean techniquely not???
  • Wow so Did Celia know Don was going to be in the movie when she recommended Evelyn play the part?
  • Oh I guess not. I thought that was a bit too far even for a Celia, but you can never know with sporadic characters like these.
  • I can see Evelyn making this unbelievably stupid mistake and I’m already cringing and knowing what’s going to happen. She didn’t loose Celia because she did an X rated movie. She lost Celia because she lied about asking how Celia felt about doing an X rated when she already had done it.
  • What happened to going to Max Gerard and saying, “please take this out. It has to go.”? WHY ISN’T SHE DOING THIS?
  • This is probably one of the single most important points and themes of this book. “Being bisexual didn’t make me disloyal.” (272)
  • “I put her in a position to continually have to approve of my choices at her own expense. Celia may have left me in a huff, but it was a death by a thousand cuts. I hurt her with these tiny scratches day after day. And then I got surprised when it left a wound too big to heal.” (272)
  • “I made it fifty-fifty. Which is about the cruelest thing you can do to someone you love, give them just enough good to make them stick through a hell of a lot of bad.” (273). I think about this a lot. About how people can be abused and still stay with their toxic spouse/partner/friend. About how sometimes you think you just need to stick it out a little longer and they’ll change.
  • “Pain was sometimes stronger than the need to keep up appearances.” (275)
  • “We should have reasons why we don’t want to give up. It shouldn’t just be that we don’t want to give up.” (287)
  • “I’ve always gone after what I want with everything in me. Others fall into happiness. Sometimes I wish I was like them. I’m sure sometimes they wish they were like me.” (347)
  • “I loved being able to show a part of myself that I had long buried. I was happy to find that when I dug it up, that part was still there, waiting for me.” (348).
    • In response to this, I just have this tweet: https://twitter.com/iknowpIxces/status/1024269150397648897
  • “No one is just a victim or a victor. Everyone is somewhere in between. People who go around casting themselves as one or the other are not only kidding themselves, but they are painfully unoriginal.” (369)
  • 9/10—Wow, I mean, I knew this was hyped SO bad. But it was SO worth it. Like why didn’t anyone yell at me to read this sooner? HUH? WHY? It honestly meant so much to me, and Evelyn is SO relatable, even though at some times I really didn’t understand her. At. All.