Emily Giffin quotes:

Everyone wants to belong, or be a part of something bigger than themselves, but it's important to follow your heart and be true to yourself in the process.

It's a funny thing - when I'm crazed with work, spending time with my children relaxes me. Yet, at the end of a long weekend with them, the very thing I need to relax is a little work and time away from them!

Evident in every small act of kindness, it was love as a verb. Love that made me feel more complete than I had ever felt in my glamorous, Jimmy Choo filled past.

Throw in the intensity of emotions that come with that bittersweet summer sandwiched between high school graduation and the rest of your life...

Inevitably I draw on my own relationships when I write, so if I'm writing about a fight between a husband and his wife, of course I'm going to think about a recent fight with my husband. Or if I'm writing about sisters, of course I'm going to think about my sister.

I'm going to keep seeing him as much as I can. We'll see what happens," I say, realizing that just "seeing what happens" is my version of "going for it.

Whenever you make a big decision in life, at least any decision where you have a viable alternative, there is an inevitable uneasy aftermath. Anxiety is merely a sign that you're taking something seriously.

Writing a teen character is something I wanted to try again for a long time!

I have always been drawn to coming-of-age stories and books and movies featuring compelling young characters.

Happiness is the best revenge, you know? Just be happy. It's a choice.

A theme in a lot of my books - and in my own life - is making choices that you feel you should make, or what society wants you to make, as opposed to what is truly right for you.

Life is about the gray areas. Things are seldom black and white, even when we wish they were and think they should be, and I like exploring this nuanced terrain.

For true downtime, I enjoy going for light runs, having drinks with friends and going to the movies with my husband.

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

I've always been intrigued by the power of secrets. When is it justifiable to keep them from the ones we love? And does keeping them irrevocably change who we are?

Guilt is a supreme waste of time and energy.

I try to recognize that there is no such thing as having it all - and it's impossible to be perfect. You just have to let certain things go.

I think the issue of female friendship really resonates well with women, ... So many women have a friend like Darcy or can relate to the feeling of being second-fiddle to a friend.

I try to write about real women, real people - in other words flawed characters.

No, scratch the word career. Careers are for people who wish to advance. I only want to survive, draw a paycheck.

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.

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.

Really-nothing is unforgivable if you truly love someone.

Things are what they are and there's no point dwelling in the past or wondering what could have been.

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

His loyalty, so fierce and unwavering, makes my eyes water and heart ache.

The worst is when someone in your past trumps the person in your present, and you think to yourself: if I'd known this, then maybe I wouldn't have let him go.

Luck is buying a lottery ticket along with your Yoo-hoo and striking it rich. Nothing about my life is lucky- it is all about hard work, it is all uphill struggle.

Whenever I hear of someone else's tragedy, I do not dwell on the accident or diagnosis, or even the initial shock waves or aftermath of grief. Instead, I find myself reconstructing those final ordinary moments. Moments that make up our lives. Moments that were blissfully taken for granted--and that likely would have been forgotten altogether but for what followed. The before snapshots.

A son is a son 'til he gets a wife, but a daughter is a daughter all her life.

She wonders what fool ever said that it's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all - she has never disagreed with something so much.

[The] maid of honor - the unambiguous, grown-up equivalent of wearing best friend necklaces.

Did she ever regret her choices? Were her decisions more clear-cut than mine - or are there always shades of gray whe it comes to matters of the heart?

We are in love and meant to be together.

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.

No matter what the circumstances. I am more like most men in this regard. No second chances. It's not so much about morality, but about my inability to forgive. I'm a champion grudge holder, and I don't think I could change this about myself even if I wanted to.

but i am content to live in the moment, and allow myself the daily pleasure of obsessing. nothing lasts forever, i tell myself. especially the good stuff. although typically you aren't faced with a hard deadline

When you are in a relationship, you are aware that it might end. You might grow apart, find someone else, simply fall out of love. But a friendship isn't a zero-sum game, and as such, you assume that it will last forever, especially an old friendship. You take its permanence for grandted, whuch might be the very thing so dear about it.

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

No, scratch the word "career." Careers are for people who wish to advance. I only want to survive, draw a paycheck.

But I am learning that perfection isn't what matters. In fact, it's the very thing that can destroy you if you let it.

Looking back, I question whether I really loved Nate, or just the security of our relationship. I wonder if my feelings for him didn't have a lot to do with hating my job. From the bar exam through that first hellish year as an associate, Nate was my escape. And sometimes that can feel an awful lot like love.

People generally didn't cheat in good relationships.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

desperately wanting to define what's in the air between us but unwilling to make the first move

So there the two of us were. Frozen in time, living in the moment, focused only on our immediate desires. Which of course included sex. Lots and lots of it.

I'm glad you were both here," I finally manage, thinking how strange it is to be standing with the two people who made you, something most kids take for granted every day of their lives.

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

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.

My head spins as I glance away, refusing to get sucked back into his gaze when so much is at risk.

You can love someone you mistrust.

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.

dangerous chemistry

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

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.

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.

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

It's like when someone dies, the initial stages of grief seem to be the worst. But in some ways, it's sadder as time goes by and you consider how much they've missed in your life. In the world.

Change can be good but its always tough to let go of the past

True love is supposed to make you into a better person-uplift you.

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.

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.

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.

Well, shoes, bags and clutches are usually my big weaknesses - my husband always laughs when I call them 'investment pieces.'

Often I feel that projects overwhelm us when we look at how many hours are involved until completion. But just getting started is usually not that difficult.

You can only control your own actions. Not other people's reactions.

I think some of the biggest time sucks are regret and guilt, and I have to fight against those things all the time. In a way, it's a good thing, because it can motivate you to make amends and forgive, but regrets are really, I think, a supreme waste of time in many ways.

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.

I'm nostalgic and I do think about a "what if."

It always takes two. For relationships to work, for them to break apart, for them to be fixed.

I think the most well-adjusted people live in the present with an eye toward the future - I'm not among those.

I think it's important to try to be present with whatever it is you're doing. And if you can't be present, take a break.

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

Some of my very closest friends are my guy friends, going back to the third grade, so I believe in the integrity of the male-female friendship.

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 thing spills, you aren't as devastated.

I write about relationships and I try to create real-life characters.

Love is seldomâ??almost neverâ??an even proposition. Someone always loves more.

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

He nods, as if to acknowledge that endings are almost always a little sad, even when there is something to look forward to on the other side.

I always find something in common with my protagonist, particularly when I write in the first person.

This time, I whispered that I loved him too. Then, I silently listed all the reason: I loved him for his gentleness. I loved him for being an amazing catch yet still vulnerable enough to be insecure. But most of all, I loved him for loving me.

Things certainly aren't the way you imagine them when you're a kid and dreaming big dreams about what your life as a grown-up will look like.

I try to be true to the characters that I've created and sometimes I disagree with them, but their opinions about the story and the characters really matter to me.

Nothing is ever perfect. It is what you make of it.

I've always loved sister stories in fiction, from the time I was little, reading about Beezus and Ramona. I've always wanted to write a sister story.

There are no absolutes in relationships. You can't take anything for granted. You can count on absolutely nothing but the unexpected. You only get in trouble when you start thinking that you're some kind of exception to the rule.

How different this moment feels, for so many reasons. I tell myself that no two loves are identical - but that I don't have to compare anymore.

I'm not trying to convey a message, I'm just trying to tell a story.

Anything worthwhile is tough.

What if two people want to be your partner, then what?

You can run but you can't hide

I don't convey that I can be moody or a perfectionist or that I'm a nervous person, but I am all those things. It's just not going to shine through when you're posting a picture.

I remember that my mother once told me that the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference.

In the final seconds before sleep, I wish I could go back and undo everything, give those little girls another chance.

I'm very open in terms of sharing bits about my life, but I think it's very easy to get a distorted sense of who anyone is through social media.

The best reason to pray is that God is really there. In praying our unbelief starts to melt. God moves smack into the middle of even an ordinary day.

The whole "misery loves company" thing never applies more than when you're breaking up. The thought that the other person is doing fine is simply too much to bear.

When I write, I picture the characters a certain way in my head, and they're not like any actor or actress. It's almost hard for me to let go of my ideas as to the way they look.

It's like Brad Pitt for us. You might not like blond men with pretty features, but c'mon, it's Brad. You're not going to kick him out of bed for eating crackers.

I think I hoped for something more. Maybe I even hoped that I could find in Richard what I had with Ben. But it is suddenly very clear: Richard is not fallin in love with me and I'm not falling in love with Richard. We are not creating anything permanent or special. We are only having fun together. It is a fling- a fling just like he said last night- a fling with an ending yet to be determined. I feel relieved to have it defined

You can't quantify love, and if you try, you can end up focusing on misleading factors. Stuff that really has more to do with personality-the fact that some people are simply more expressive or emotional or needy in a relationship. But beyond such smokescreens, the answer is there. Love is seldom-almost never-an even proposition.

In my stories, I think, as I've gotten older, the characters have become stronger and more independent, and more capable of making unconventional decisions.

I think that we have to consciously be aware that every moment we're in, every different stage in our lives, we can control.

I do not expect to get what I want, so I don't. And I don't even try.

And without Dex in my life, I like to think I could have somehow found contentment. But the truth is, I feel freer with Dex than I ever did when I was single. I feel more myself with him than without. Maybe true love does that

One way isn't better than the other; they're just different.

My relationship with my sister is so central to my life. She's my closest friend, my biggest supporter, and I know she would say the same about me.

Love as a verb. Love as a commitment.

He was uncomplicated and upbeat and easy. At one point, I might have thought these traits made him a simpleton, but now I think they just translate to happiness.

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.

When you're in love, sometimes you have to swallow your pride, and sometimes you have to keep your pride. It's a balance. But when the relationship is right, you find the balance.

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

(mother)" She used to tell me to get my nose out of my book and go get some fresh air.

I have one final hope, If I get double sixes, maybe he will change his mind, come back to me. As if to cast a magic spell, I blow on the dice just as Dex did...Just as it happened with our first roll, one die lands before its mate. On a six! I hold my breath. For a brief second, I see a mess of dots, and think I have boxcars again. I kneel, staring at the second die. It is onle a five. I have rolled an eleven, It is as if someone is mocking me, saying, Close, but no dice.

That's how life is. Sometimes there are happy endings, sometimes there aren't, and more often there are shades of gray.