Quotes from Just One of the Guys

Kristan Higgins ·  376 pages

Rating: (14.2K votes)


“Where's your fiancé?" Trevor asks casually. I stiffen slightly, and Trevor steps back a little. "Well," I breathe. "Um, we sort of broke up."

Trevor's eyes widen a fraction, an eyebrow raising in surprise. He stops dancing, but none of the other couples seem to notice, too caught up in being in love. "Why?" Trevor whispers, still holding my hand, his arm still around me.

My hearts thumps harder, slower, each beat waiting for my answer as I stare into Trevor's eyes. I open my mouth to give some answer, some casual it-didn't-work-out kind of thing. But instead, I hear myself say something else entirely.

"Because he wasn't you.”
― Kristan Higgins, quote from Just One of the Guys


“And so I make a pact with the devil, or in this case, my mommy.”
― Kristan Higgins, quote from Just One of the Guys


“I've loved you my whole life, Chas, from that first day you took me home after Michelle died. And I'm terrified you'll leave me or you'll stop loving me or even worse, something will happen to you. But I can't be without you anymore." He takes my hands, which are shaking wildly, and swallows.

"Today I watched Mike give away the woman he loves. I can't do that, Chas. I thought I could, I thought it would be better if you were with someone else, but I was wrong. And I swear to you, I will love you the rest of my life and nothing will ever come before you. Please, Chastity. Forgive me and marry me and have a bunch of babies with me, and I'll-”
― Kristan Higgins, quote from Just One of the Guys


“Love gets used up, Chastity. If it's not returned, it gets used up.”
― Kristan Higgins, quote from Just One of the Guys


“And all that 'don't want to lose you' is utter bullshit. But just in case it's true, guess what? You did lose me. Just now.”
― Kristan Higgins, quote from Just One of the Guys



“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, I'm a bleeping idiot.”
― Kristan Higgins, quote from Just One of the Guys


“Don't ever marry a man who loves his work more than he loves you.”
― Kristan Higgins, quote from Just One of the Guys


“But I hardly hear anyone, because Trevor is kissing me and whispering, over and over, "I love you, Chas. I love you, I love you, I love you.”
― Kristan Higgins, quote from Just One of the Guys


“Then before he could break the moment, before he could turn away, I kissed him, and he didn’t stop me. Instead, he pushed my hair out of my face, and he kissed me back, gently, sweetly, his hand slipping behind my head, his lips moving just right against mine, smooth and warm. I gripped his shirt and sighed against his mouth, and knew that as long as I lived, this would be the one perfect kiss that I’d remember forever.”
― Kristan Higgins, quote from Just One of the Guys


“He knows. I can see it in his eyes, he feels how much I love him still, and maybe he's always known.”
― Kristan Higgins, quote from Just One of the Guys



“So you can’t marry Harry, Mom! Not if you still love Daddy!” I sound like a ten-year-old, but I can’t help it. Buttercup comes over to me and puts her head on my lap.
“Love gets used up, Chastity,” Mom says gently, reaching up to smooth my hair. “If it’s not returned, it gets used up.”
― Kristan Higgins, quote from Just One of the Guys


“For twelve years, I've been trying to make him just one of the guys. He's not.”
― Kristan Higgins, quote from Just One of the Guys


“Wrong," he growls in a voice I've never heard. "Very, very wrong, Chastity. If we were together and didn't work, I'd be out you. You're the one I can't lose”
― Kristan Higgins, quote from Just One of the Guys


“I guess I've found that I'd rather be alone than with the wrong person.”
― Kristan Higgins, quote from Just One of the Guys


About the author

Kristan Higgins
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“Liza-don't let it make any difference. It won't, will it? With us, I mean."
"Of course it won't," I told her.
But I was wrong. Six months of not writing-that's a difference.
And so I lied to Annie. On top of everything else, I lied to Annie, too.”
― Nancy Garden, quote from Annie on My Mind


“Yes or no?"
"It's always yes with you."
"Except when it's no."
"If you have to keep asking because—I'll answer it as many times as you ask. But this is always going to be yes."
"Don't 'always' me."
"Don't ask for the truth if you're just going to dilute it.”
― Nora Sakavic, quote from The King's Men


“For a long while I have believed – this is perhaps my version of Sir Darius Xerxes Cama’s belief in a fourth function of outsideness – that in every generation there are a few souls, call them lucky or cursed, who are simply born not belonging, who come into the world semi-detached, if you like, without strong affiliation to family or location or nation or race; that there may even be millions, billions of such souls, as many non-belongers as belongers, perhaps; that, in sum, the phenomenon may be as “natural” a manifestation of human nature as its opposite, but one that has been mostly frustrated, throughout human history, by lack of opportunity.

And not only by that: for those who value stability, who fear transience, uncertainly, change, have erected a powerful system of stigmas and taboos against rootlessness, that disruptive, anti-social force, so that we mostly conform, we pretend to be motivated by loyalties and solidarities we do not really feel, we hide our secret identities beneath the false skins of those identities which bear the belongers’ seal of approval.

But the truth leaks out in our dreams; alone in our beds (because we are all alone at night, even if we do not sleep by ourselves), we soar, we fly, we flee. And in the waking dreams our societies permit, in our myths, our arts, our songs, we celebrate the non-belongers, the different ones, the outlaws, the freaks.

What we forbid ourselves we pay good money to watch, in a playhouse or a movie theater, or to read about between the secret covers of a book. Our libraries, our palaces of entertainment tell the truth. The tramp, the assassin, the rebel, the thief, the mutant, the outcast, the delinquent, the devil, the sinner, the traveler, the gangster, the runner, the mask: if we did not recognize in them our least-fulfilled needs, we would not invent them over and over again, in every place, in every language, in every time.”
― Salman Rushdie, quote from The Ground Beneath Her Feet


“And more even than the painter, the writer, in order to achieve volume and substance, in order to attain to generality and, so far as literature can, to reality, needs to have seen many churches in order to paint one church and for the portrayal of a single sentiment requires many individuals. For if art is long and life is short, we may on the other hand say that, if inspiration is short, the sentiments which it has to portray are not of much longer duration. It is our passions which draw the outline of our books, the ensuing intervals of repose which write them.”
― Marcel Proust, quote from Time Regained


“Valuables. That was a hot one, Richards thought, unbuttoning his shirt. He had an empty wallet with a few pictures of Sheila and Cathy, a receipt for a shoe sole he had replaced at the local cobbler's six months ago, a keyring with no keys on it except for the doorkey, a baby sock that he did not remember putting in there, and the package of Blams he had gotten from the machine.”
― Richard Bachman, quote from The Running Man


Interesting books

The Marriage of Opposites
(40.4K)
The Marriage of Oppo...
by Alice Hoffman
Choices of One
(4.6K)
Choices of One
by Timothy Zahn
The Moth in the Mirror
(4.4K)
The Moth in the Mirr...
by A.G. Howard
The Complete Poems of Emily Bronte [with Biographical Introduction]
(2.6K)
The Complete Poems o...
by Emily Brontë
The Quest for Cosmic Justice
(762)
The Quest for Cosmic...
by Thomas Sowell
Long Walk to Freedom: Autobiography of Nelson Mandela
(50.6K)
Long Walk to Freedom...
by Nelson Mandela

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.