Jenny Han Quotes

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

“I’ve never gotten a love letter before. But reading these notes like this, one after the other, it feels like I have. It’s like...it’s like there’s only ever been Peter. Like everyone else that came before him, they were all to prepare me for this.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Peter Kavinsky just kissed me. He kissed me, and I liked it. I’m pretty sure I liked it. I’m pretty sure I like him.”

“Firsts are best because they are beginnings.”

“Plenty of people are good-looking. That doesn’t make them interesting or intriguing or cool.”

“But I don’t want him. I want someone else. It feels strange to have spent so much time wishing for something, for someone, and then one day, suddenly, to just stop.”

“Do you think there’s a difference? Between belonging with and belong to, I mean?”

“Margot would say she belongs to herself. Kitty would say she belongs to no one. And I guess I would say I belong to my sisters and my dad, but that won’t always be true. To belong to someone - I didn’t know it, but now that I think about it, it seems like that’s all I’ve ever wanted. To really be somebody’s , and to have them be mine.”

“I smile, because it’s so cute. And for a second, just for a second, I forget. I forget that this isn’t real.”

“I don’t have to be so afraid of goodbye, because goodbye doesn’t have to be forever.”

“I want to say yes, but I don’t want to be with a boy whose heart belongs to somebody else. Just once, I want to be some one else’s first choice.”

“You only like guys you don’t have a shot with, because you’re scared. What are you so scared of?”

“I kiss him one more time and I feel like I’m flying.”

“Love is scary: it changes; it can go away. That’s part of the risk. I don’t want to be scared any more.”

“Sister’s are supposed to fight and make up, because they are sisters and sisters always find their way back to each other.”

“There is a specific kind of fight you can only have with your sister. It’s the kind where you say things you can’t take back. You say them because you can’t help but say them, because you’re so angry it’s coming up in your throat and out your eyes; you’re so angry you can’t see straight. All you see is blood.”

“How am 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.”

“It’s funny how much of childhood is about proximity.”

“Things feel like they’ll be forever, but they aren’t. Love can go away, or people can, without even meaning to. Nothing is guaranteed.”

“I don’t know a ton about dating or guys, but I do know that jealous insecurity is a real turnoff.”

“You have to let yourself be fully present in every moment.”

“I want to say, I never cared about your past. But that isn’t true. It’s only then that I realize: Peter wasn’t the one who needed to get over Genevieve. It was me. All this time with Peter, I’ve been comparing myself to her, all the ways I don’t measure up. All the ways our relationship pales next to theirs. I’m the one who couldn’t let her go. I’m the one who didn’t give us a chance.”

“So much of love is chance. There’s something scary and wonderful about that.”

“People come in and out of your life. For a time they are your world; they are everything. And then one day they’re not.”

“I know now that I don’t want to love or be loved in half measures. I want it all, and to have it all, you have to risk it all.”

“So I take Peter’s hand; I put it on my heart. I tell him, ‘You have to take good care of this, because it’s yours.’”

“‘Us,’ Peter corrects. ‘I did it for us.’ He links our fingers together. ‘It’s you and me, kid.’”

“‘Well, I still don’t think it’s pathetic to cry over someone. It just means you care about them deeply and you’re sad.’”

“I suppose you can’t hold on to old things just for the sake of holding on.”

“‘Let’s go all in. No more contract. No more safety net. You can break my heart. Do whatever you want with it.’”

“He looks at me in such a way that I know for sure-he’s never looked at another girl quite like this. And then I’m in his arms, and we’re hugging and kissing, and we’re both shaking, because we both know-this is the night we become real.”

“And then, when you look at me the way you do, I feel like the luckiest girl in the world.”

“I’ve heard people say that the more you like someone, the more you think they are beautiful even if you didn’t think so at the beginning.”

“A girl’s relationship with her father is the most important male relationship of her life.”

“‘I don’t think any man is my equal. Women are far superior, and don’t you forget it.’”

“There’s a Korean word my grandma taught me. It’s called jung. It’s the connection between two people that can’t be severed, even when love turns to hate. You still have those old feelings for them; you can’t ever completely shake them loose of you; you will always have tenderness in your heart for them.”

“There are two kinds of girls in this world. The kind who breaks hearts and the kind who gets her heart broken.”

“‘You’re not first,’ Peter says. ‘But you’re the most special to me, because you’re the girl I love, Lara Jean.’”

“To me, my mother wasn’t that mysterious. She was my mother. Always reasonable, always sure of herself. To me, she was about as mysterious as a glass of water. She knew what she wanted; she knew what she didn’t want.”

“The air tasted just the same, smelled just the same. The wind making my hair feel sticky, the salty sea breeze, all of it felt just right. Like it had been waiting for me to get there.”

“My mother was good at that, making people feel normal. Safe. Like as long as she was there, nothing truly bad could happen.”

“It was like coming home after you’d been gone a long, long time. It held a million promises of summer and of what just might be.”

“Over his shoulder Conrad said, ‘Good night Belly.’ And that was it. I was in love”

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

“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.”

“It was a summer I would never, ever forget. It was the summer everything began. It was the summer I turned pretty. Because for the first time, I felt it. Pretty, I mean. Every summer up to this one, I believed it’d be different. Life would be different. And that summer, it finally was.”

“Everything that happened this past summer, and every summer before it, has all led up to this. To now.”

“For me, it was almost like winter didn’t count. Summer was what mattered. My whole life was measured in summers.”

“I think he would have stayed with her forever, trying to figure out the mystery. He was a puzzle solver, the kind of person who likes theorems, theories. X always had to equal something. It couldn’t just be X.”