Jenny Han Quotes:

Moments, when lost, can't be found again. They're just gone.

Topics: Romance, Gone, Moments, Jenny

For me there was-is-nothing better than walking on the beach late at night. It feels like you could walk forever, like the whole night is yours and so is the ocean. When you walk on the beach at night, you can say things you can't say in real life. In the dark you can feel really close to a person. You can say whatever you want.

source: - Jenny Han (2010). “The Summer I Turned Pretty”, p.171, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Beach, Real, Ocean, Jenny, Walking On The Beach

Would you rather live one perfect day over and over or live your life with no perfect days but just decent ones?

source: - Jenny Han (2010). “The Summer I Turned Pretty”, p.100, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Life, Perfect, Live Your Life, Jenny, Perfect Days

How do you regret one of the best nights of your entire life? You don't. You remember every word, every look. Even when it hurts, you still remember.

Topics: Hurt, Regret, Night, Jenny, Best Night

It's the imperfections that make things beautiful.

Topics: Beauty, Beautiful, Imperfection, Jenny

It's a lot of responsibility to hold a person's heart in your hands.

source: - Jenny Han (2014). “To All the Boys I've Loved Before”, p.37, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Heart, Responsibility, Hands

We stood there, looking at each other, saying nothing. But it was the kind of nothing that meant everything.

source: - Jenny Han (2011). “It's Not Summer Without You”, p.273, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Love, Life, Regret, Jenny

He didn't give me flowers or candy. He gave me the moon and the stars. Infinity.

source: - Jenny Han (2011). “We'll Always Have Summer”, p.281, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Love, Stars, Flower, Jenny

That's when I finally got it. I finally understood. It wasn't the thought that counted. It was the actual execution that mattered, the showing up for somebody. The intent behind it wasn't enough. Not for me. Not anymore. It wasn't enough to know that deep down, he loved me. You had to actually say it to somebody, show them you cared. And he just didn't. Not enough.

Topics: True Love, Execution, Showing Up, Jenny

Happiness is a Slurpee and a hot pink straw.

Topics: Hot, Straws, Hot Pink

I've always loved the first day of school better than the last day of school. Firsts are best because they are beginnings.

source: - Jenny Han (2014). “To All the Boys I've Loved Before”, p.62, Scholastic UK

Topics: School, Lasts, Firsts, Last Day, First Day Of School

If you were mine, I would never have broken up with you, not in a million years.

Topics: Years, Broken

But the little things are what make up life

source: - Jenny Han (2014). “To All the Boys I've Loved Before”, p.294, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Littles, Little Things

It's scary how easy promises were broken.

Topics: Broken, Scary, Promise

When it's finals week and you've been studying for five hours straight, you need three things to get you through the nigh.The biggest Slurpee you can find,half cherry half Coke.Pajama pants, the kind that have been washed so many times they are tissue-paper thin. And finally,dace breaks.Lots of dance breaks.

Topics: Finals, Three, Needs, Tissue Paper, Finals Week

You can't put being in love on a scale. Either you are or you aren't.

Topics: Being In Love, Scales

I think I see the difference now, between loving someone from afar and loving someone up close. When you see them up close, you see the real them, but they also get to see the real you.

Topics: Real, Thinking, Differences

When boy likes you, you say no thank you. You don't kick him on the ground.

Topics: Boys, Likes, Kicks

There's no use in asking what if. No one could ever give you the answers.

Topics: Giving, What If, Asking, Way Of Thinking, Road Not Taken

Everything in my room was old and faded, but I loved that about it. It felt like there might be secrets in the walls, in the four-poster bed, especially in that music box.

Topics: Wall, Secret, Bed

Do you know what it's like to like someone so much you can't stand it and know that they'll never feel the same way

Topics: Liking Someone, Way, Feels

Aching familiar in a way that made me wish I was still eight. Eight was before death or divorce or heartbreak. Eight was just eight. Hot dogs and peanut butter, mosquito bites and splinters, bikes and boogie boards. Tangled hair, sunburned shoulders, Judy Blume, in bed by nine thirty.

Topics: Dog, Divorce, Eight, Boogie, Before Death

Sometimes questions can be more cruel than insults.

Topics: Insult, Sometimes

Love is scary: it changes; it can go away. That's the part of the risk. I don't want to be scared anymore.

Topics: Love Is, Scary, Risk

I hate change more than almost anything.

Topics: Hate, I Hate

You'd rather make up a fantasy version of somebody in your head than be with a real person.

Topics: Real, Fantasy, Persons

There are moments in life that you wish with all your heart you could take back. Like, just erase from existence. Like, if you could, you'd erase yourself right out of existence too, just to make that moment not exist.

Topics: Heart, Wish, Moments, Jenny

When you walk on the beach at night, you can say things you can't say in real life.

Topics: Beach, Real, Night

Best friends are important. They're the closest thing to a sister you'll ever have.

source: - Jenny Han (2010). “The Summer I Turned Pretty”, p.181, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Important

Things couldn't stay the same forever.

source: - Jenny Han (2010). “The Summer I Turned Pretty”, p.98, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Forever

Victory is a thousand times sweeter when you're the underdog.

source: - Jenny Han (2010). “The Summer I Turned Pretty”, p.133, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Victory, Underdog, Thousand

When someone's been gone a long time, at first you save up all the things you want to tell them. You try to keep track of everything in your head. But it's like trying to hold on to a fistful of sand: all the little bits slip out of your hands, and then you're just clutching air and grit.

Topics: Air, Hands, Long

Maybe that was how it was with all first loves. They own a little piece of your heart, always.

source: - Jenny Han (2012). “We'll Always Have Summer”, p.45, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Heart, First Love, Pieces

In the dark you can feel really close to a person. You can say whatever you want.

Topics: Dark, Want, Feels

There's no use in asking what if. No one could ever give you the answers. I try, I really do, but it's hard for me to accept this way of thinking. I'm always wondering about the what-ifs, about the road not taken.

Topics: Taken, Thinking, Giving

Firsts are best because they are beginnings

Topics: Firsts

I didn't want to make the same mistake my parents made. I didn't want my love to fade away one day like an old scar. I wanted it to burn forever.

Topics: Mistake, Parent, Forever

An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. a burn for a burn. a life for a life. that's how all this got started. and that's how it's going to end.

Topics: Life, Eye, Teeth, Eye For An Eye

Everything good, everything magical happens between the months of June and August. Winters are simply a time to count the weeks until the next summer

Topics: Summer, Winter, June

Seventeen's not so young. A hundred years ago people got married when they were practically our age." "Yeah, that was before electricity and the Internet. A hundred years ago eighteen-year-old guys were out there fighting wars with bayonets and holding a man's life in their hands! They lived a lot of life by the time they were our age. What do kids our age know about love and life?

Topics: Love, War, Kids, Old Guys, Eighteen Years Old

I loved the feeling of talking and having somebody really listen to what I have to say. It was like a high or something.

source: - Jenny Han (2010). “The Summer I Turned Pretty”, p.142, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Talking, Feelings

I will never look at you in the same way ever again. I'll never be that girl again. The girl who comes running back every time you push her away, the girl who loves you anyway.

source: - Jenny Han (2011). “It's Not Summer Without You”, p.273, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Love, Life, Girl, That Girl, Jenny

It's a known fact, that in life, you can't have everyhing. In my heart, I knew that I loved them both as much as it is possible to love two people at the same time. Conrad and I were linked, we would always be linked. That wasn't something I could do away with. And I know that now--that love isn't something you can erase--no matter how hard you try.

Topics: Heart, Love Is, Two

I knew it in my bones. That this time was it. I had finally made my choice, and so had he. He let me go. I was relieved, which I expected. What I didn't expect was to feel so much grief.

Topics: Love, Life, Regret, Jenny

I release you. I evict you from my heart. Because if I don't do it now, I never will.

Topics: Love, Life, Regret

But just because you bury something, that doesn't mean it stops existing. Those feelings, they'd been there all along. All that time. I had to face it.

source: - Jenny Han (2012). “We'll Always Have Summer”, p.44, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Love, Life, Regret

I need you to know that no matter what happens, it was worth it to me. Being with you, loving you. It was all worth it

source: - Jenny Han (2011). “We'll Always Have Summer”, p.276, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Love, Life, Regret, I Need You

I loved him in a way that you can really only do the first time around. It's the kind of love that doesn't know better and doesn't want to-it's dizzy and foolish and fierce. That kind of love is really a one-time-only thing.

Topics: Love, Life, Regret

To belong to someone - I didn't know it, but now that I think about, it seems like that's all I've ever wanted. To really be somebody's, and to have them be mine.

Topics: Thinking, Wanted

Life doesn't have to be so planned. Just roll with it and let it happen.

source: - Jenny Han (2014). “To All the Boys I've Loved Before”, p.120, Simon and Schuster

Do you think there's a difference? Between belonging with and belonging to?

Topics: Thinking, Differences, Belonging

How was I supposed to know what's real and what's not? It feels like I'm the only one who doesn't know the difference.

Topics: Real, Differences, Feels

You never know the last time you’ll see a place. A person.

source: - Jenny Han (2011). “It's Not Summer Without You”, p.124, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Lasts, Last Time, Persons

It’s hard to throw away history. It was like you were throwing away a part of yourself.

source: - Jenny Han (2009). “The Summer I Turned Pretty”, p.186, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Like You, Throwing, Throwing Away

Sometimes it’s like people are a million times more beautiful to you in your mind. It’s like you see them through a special lens—but maybe if it’s how you see them,that’s how they really are.It’s like the whole tree falling in the forest thing.

source: - Jenny Han (2010). “The Summer I Turned Pretty”, p.47, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Beautiful, Fall, People

If love is like a possession, maybe my letters are like my exorcisms.

source: - Jenny Han (2011). “It's Not Summer Without You”, p.295, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Love Is, Exorcism, Letters

And no matter what you do or how hard you try, you can’t stop yourself from dreaming.

source: - Jenny Han (2011). “It's Not Summer Without You”, p.26, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Love, Life, Dream

Looking on the bright side of life never killed anybody.

source: - Jenny Han (2014). “To All the Boys I've Loved Before”, p.77, Scholastic UK

Topics: Sides, Bright Side

When a person you love dies, it doesn’t feel real. It’s like it’s happening to someone else. It’s someone else’s life. I’ve never been good with the abstract. What does it mean when someone is really truly gone?

source: - Jenny Han (2011). “It's Not Summer Without You”, p.2, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Real, Mean, Doe

There hadn’t been one specific moment. It was like gradualy waking up. You go from being asleep to the space between dreaming and awake and then into consciousness. It’s a slow process, but when you’re awake, there’s no mistaking it. There was no mistaking that it had been love.

Topics: Dream, Space, Wake Up

It feels strange to have spent much time wishing for something, for someone and then one day, suddenly, to just stop.

source: - Jenny Han (2014). “To All the Boys I've Loved Before”, p.283, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Wish, One Day, Strange, Wishing For Something

Here's something else, something important: Love is not transactional. It is not a bank account, you don't always get what you put in. Sometimes you put in so much and get very little return on your investment, at least that you can see right away.

Topics: Love Is, Important, Return

I wonder what it's like to have that much power over a boy. I don't think I'd want it - it's a lot of responsibility to hold a person's heart in your hands.

source: - Jenny Han (2014). “To All the Boys I've Loved Before”, p.37, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Heart, Responsibility, Boys