Quotes from Emily Giffin

I don't know what a carbuncle is, but it doesn't sound pleasant. I wish one upon Rachel's nose.

A big mistake. The kind of mistake that brews resentment and dangerous fissures. The kind of mistake that makes your heart ache. The kind of mistake that makes you long for another choice, the past, someone else.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that life is fast. And it keeps speeding up. Sometimes I lose track of the season—or even the year. And we just have to make the best of it all.

I think of Josie's theory that it's all interrelated, that it all goes back to that night in December, all of our decisions and dreams and mistakes from the past inextricably linked.

I have a fleeting fantasy of telling her that procreation isn't a contest, any more than SAT scores and making the cheerleading squad and getting into a good college and all the other things, both big and small, that she turned into a contest when Janie and I were young, going all the way back to whose baby teeth came in first, according to my mother.

Minigolf," she said with stone seriousness, "is a metaphor for life." I smiled and said, "Oh, really?" "Yes. I mean, think about it….Do you take it seriously? Too seriously? Do you enjoy it? Do you keep careful score? Do you get upset when you lose? Do you cheat? And if you do cheat, how do you react when you're busted? Are you sheepish? Sorry? Do you do it again?

Vatican Palace…because in Venturi's words, 'Less is

I close my eyes, inhale, and feel a rush of heat and energy that takes my breath away. It is the feeling of wanting something so much that it borders on an actual need, and the power and urgency of this need overwhelms me.

After all, there is nothing like a mother telling you that you're making a bad decision to convince you that what you are doing is the absolute best course of action.

Don't go giving this encounter any crazy meaning like you did with him the first time around. It doesn't mean a thing. Not a thing. Sometimes, in life, there is no meaning at all.

Clutter is knowing all of the things that you absorb through your fashion magazines. Clutter is knowing which celebrities broke up with whom and why.

I guess she's been like this since her arrival here, maybe even our whole lives, but sometimes when you know someone well, you don't see them as they really are. So I honestly think I've managed to ignore this fundamental part of her personality, perhaps not wanting to see my closest friend in this light.

But it's not that simple or clear-cut—and I wonder if it ever is when it comes to matters of the heart.

Songs and smells will bring you back to a moment in time more than anything else. It's amazing how much can be conjured with a few notes of a song or a solitary whiff of a room. A song you didn't even pay attention to at the time, a place that you didn't even know had a particular smell.

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.

She knows in her heart that it doesn't work like this. That misfortune doesn't give you the right to disregard others, ignore the rules, tell lies and half-truths.

o oposto do amor não é o ódio, é a indiferença. (p. 306) (GIFFIN, 2004.)

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

that hard work, honesty, and integrity always paid off in the end, while skating by on your looks was somehow an offense. And like that day playing psychiatrist, I occasionally worried that she was right.

But at the time, I honestly didn't think I was hurting anyone, not even myself. I didn't think much at all, in fact. Yes, I was gorgeous and lucky in love, but I truly believed that I was also a decent person who deserved her good fortune.

That either (a) she uses children to hide her real adult emotions, or (b) she is still a child herself.

That nothing can be real when marred with so many lies.

On a subconscious level, I subscribe to the notion that if you worry about something, it is somehow less likely to happen. Well, I am here to say that it doesn't work like that. The very thing you fear the most can still happen anyway. And when it does, you feel that much more cheated for having feared it in the first place.

You were only in love with the idea of love. And now you are in love with the idea of a broken heart…