Notes & Highlights for The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid (2024)

byNatasha

I once read that charisma is “charm that inspires devotion.” And I can’t help but think of that now, when she’s holding my coffee for me.

Don’t be so tied up trying to do the right thing when the smart thing is so painfully clear.”

When you’re given an opportunity to change your life, be ready to do whatever it takes to make it happen. The world doesn’t give things, you take things. If you learn one thing from me, it should probably be that.”

If the definition of enjoying sex means that it is pleasurable, then I’ve had a lot of sex that I didn’t enjoy. But if we’re defining it as being happy to have made the trade, then, well, I haven’t had much I hated.

That’s the part I was stuck in, the part where you accept the apology because it’s easier than addressing the root of the problem,

But the truth is, praise is just like an addiction. The more you get it, the more of it you need just to stay even.

People think that intimacy is about sex. But intimacy is about truth. When you realize you can tell someone your truth, when you can show yourself to them, when you stand in front of them bare and their response is “You’re safe with me”—that’s intimacy.

What’s that saying? Behind every gorgeous woman, there’s a man sick of screwing her? Well, it works both ways. No one mentions that part.

Sometimes reality comes crashing down on you. Other times reality simply waits, patiently, for you to run out of the energy it takes to deny it.

“Heartbreak is loss. Divorce is a piece of paper.”

“Isn’t it awfully convenient,” Harry added, “that when men make the rules, the one thing that’s looked down on the most is the one thing that would bear them the greatest threat? Imagine if every single woman on the planet wanted something in exchange when she gave up her body. You’d all be ruling the place. An armed populace. Only men like me would stand a chance against you. And that’s the last thing those assholes want, a world run by people like you and me.”

You do not know how fast you have been running, how hard you have been working, how truly exhausted you are, until someone stands behind you and says, “It’s OK, you can fall down now. I’ll catch you.”

“All I’ve ever wanted was for you to be truly mine. But you’ve never been mine. Not really. I’ve always had to settle for one piece of you. While the world gets the other half. I don’t blame you. It doesn’t make me stop loving you. But I can’t do it. I can’t do it, Evelyn. I can’t live with my heart half-broken all the time.”

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.

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.

I have been reeling because I failed. Because I picked the wrong guy for me. Because I entered the wrong marriage. Because the truth is that at the age of thirty-five, I have yet to love someone enough to sacrifice for them. I’ve yet to open my heart enough to let someone in that much.

Some marriages aren’t really that great. Some loves aren’t all-encompassing. Sometimes you separate because you weren’t that good together to begin with. Sometimes divorce isn’t an earth-shattering loss. Sometimes it’s just two people waking up out of a fog.

But once he has his hand on the doorknob, I realize that I have put into motion the end of a lackluster life in the interest of eventually finding a great one.

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’re also painfully unoriginal.”