Quotes from My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories

Stephanie Perkins ·  321 pages

Rating: (30.2K votes)


“You're a kaleidoscope, you change every time I look away.”
― Stephanie Perkins, quote from My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories


“He says presents aren't important, but I think they are - not because of how much they cost, but for the opportunity they provide to say I understand you.”
― Stephanie Perkins, quote from My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories


“Would you rather be great at something you like, or just okay at something you love?”
― Stephanie Perkins, quote from My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories


“I guess I don't really know what I want to do, either. Sometimes I feel like a shook-up bottle of soda. Like, I have all this passion that wants to explode, but I don't know where to aim it yet.”
― Stephanie Perkins, quote from My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories


“I need you to be my person. I need to see you. And hear you. I need you to stay alive. And I need you to stop kissing other people just because they're standing next to you when the ball drops.”
― Stephanie Perkins, quote from My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories



“But people don't need to remember how it felt to be happy and safe in the past. They need to have hope that they can get there again in the future.”
― Stephanie Perkins, quote from My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories


“Sometimes I felt like I was waiting for my life to begin and more than anything, in that moment, I wanted to force some kind of beginning. I wanted things to be different than usual. I wanted to bend reality.”
― Stephanie Perkins, quote from My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories


“Shame leads to secrets, and secrets lead to lies, and lies ruin everything.”
― Stephanie Perkins, quote from My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories


“Noel was her very best friend - even if she wasn't his. Noel was her person.”
― Stephanie Perkins, quote from My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories


“Love was love.
But she hoped that he was not a dragon.”
― Stephanie Perkins, quote from My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories



“We all love and we all lose and we go on loving just the same.”
― Stephanie Perkins, quote from My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories


“I am here, and he is here, and everything I need to know is that I will hold him and he will hold me until I am warm again, until I know I belong. (Your Temporary Santa)”
― Stephanie Perkins, quote from My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories


“Not that kind of cheating," Mags said. "More like...skipping ahead. If you like someone, you should have to make an effort. You should have to get to know the person--you should have to work for that first kiss.”
― Stephanie Perkins, quote from My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories


“Christmas Eve is my favorite... I think the anticipation is more fun than anything else. I kind of lost that. The idea that something - food, traditions, an arbitrary date on the calendar - can be special because we decide it should be. We make it special. Not just for ourselves, but for others.”
― Stephanie Perkins, quote from My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories


“I sang because that is what I do when I am happy and when I'm sad. I sang because it is who I am when I am being the best possible version of me.”
― Stephanie Perkins, quote from My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories



“And there - when he smiles, his whole faces lights up. It's like his other expressions are placeholders.”
― Stephanie Perkins, quote from My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories


“Sweetheart, when you lose someone, you lose a little bit of yourself, too. And that missing piece? Sometimes you have to lose the rest of yourself to find it.”
― Stephanie Perkins, quote from My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories


“If you let a single life event define you then all you need to change things--if you want them to change--is another.”
― Stephanie Perkins, quote from My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories


“She wanted to be free, and if she could never be free, at least she wanted to be brave - brave enough not to sell herself, no matter what the payment, or the cost of refusing.”
― Stephanie Perkins, quote from My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories


“You can't undo loss. You can't unmake a mistake. (What The Hell Have You Done, Sophie Roth?)”
― Stephanie Perkins, quote from My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories



“The door opens with a rusted jingle, and an animatronic Santa insults my moral virtue three times. Ho, ho, ho.”
― Stephanie Perkins, quote from My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories


“The feeling it gave me was an odd combination of weightless self-pity and excitement. I understood my life was meaningless, and this knowledge freed me up to accomplish absolutely anything.”
― Stephanie Perkins, quote from My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories


“She was the goddess of...herself. And he could not look away from her.”
― Stephanie Perkins, quote from My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories


“I stayed there on the floor like that for a long, long time.
Eating and crying.
Crying and eating.”
― Stephanie Perkins, quote from My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories


“Thr rareness, the specialness, of North. Of this night. She wished it could last forever. (It's a yuletide miracle, Charlie Brown)”
― Stephanie Perkins, quote from My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories



“His eyes follow me everywhere, and we keep sharing smiles that feel like secrets.(Kiersten White)”
― Stephanie Perkins, quote from My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories


“I am worried about being in love, because it invelves asking so much. I am worried my life will never fit into his.”
― Stephanie Perkins, quote from My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories


“Some kinds of misery make you hate the world, but some kinds make you hate yourself, and--butter and cheese not withstanding--Neve had no question that Spear was the latter.”
― Stephanie Perkins, quote from My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories


“Christmas is supposed to be this time when everyone is nice to one another and forgives one another and all that, but the true meaning of Christmas is presents. And in the real world, Santa’s not fair. Rich kids get everything and poor kids get secondhand crap their parents bust their asses to afford. It costs money just to sit on Santa’s lap.”
― Stephanie Perkins, quote from My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories


About the author

Stephanie Perkins
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“Un guerrero se define por momentos", dijo Aiden. "Un solo momento puede hacerte un guerrero. Un guerrero se define también por las decisiones. Por su coraje. Pero un guerrero también es alguien normal. No puedes ser un guerrero a cada momento. Pero, el espíritu de un guerrero siempre está presente.”
― Morgan Rice, quote from Desired


“@She is really really so beautiful there,' said Assad.
Carl glanced at him. Apparently a woman's appearance was a particularly valuable factor in his assistant's world-view. But Carl agreed with him.”
― Jussi Adler-Olsen, quote from The Keeper of Lost Causes


“A wave would arrive, all out of breath, but, as it had nothing to report, it would disperse in apologetic salaams.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, quote from The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov


“Conall checked his watch. Again. Soon his personal wet fantasy would be here. He wondered if it would be inappropriate to tackle her in the hallway as soon as she arrived and drag her up to his bedroom. Probably. Damn human etiquette.”
― quote from Go Fetch!


“He often has followed current fads and modes in an attempt to affiliate himself more firmly with the structures of contemporary existence.”
― Robert Silverberg, quote from Dying Inside


Interesting books

Ethan, Who Loved Carter
(3.4K)
Ethan, Who Loved Car...
by Ryan Loveless
Shadows on the Moon
(3.7K)
Shadows on the Moon
by Zoë Marriott
The Satyricon
(5.7K)
The Satyricon
by Petronius Arbiter
A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing
(6.7K)
A Girl Is a Half-for...
by Eimear McBride
Roomies
(5.7K)
Roomies
by Lindy Zart
Broken Pieces
(4.8K)
Broken Pieces
by Riley Hart

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.