Bittersweet Quotes

“I'll fight it. I'll fight it for you. Don't you worry about me, Hazel Grace. I'm okay. I'll find a way to hang around and annoy you for a long time.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or tortuous as the heart. Bitter. Sweet. Alive.”
― Joanne Harris, Chocolat

“Would 'sorry' have made any difference? Does it ever? It's just a word. One word against a thousand actions.”
― Sarah Ockler, Bittersweet

“Our sweetest songs are those of saddest thought.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Complete Poems

“I do not think I responded immediately, for it took me a moment or two to fully digest these words of Miss Kenton. Moreover, as you might appreciate, their implications were such as to provoke a certain degree of sorrow within me. Indeed- why should I not admit it? - at that moment, my heart was breaking.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day

“There's that horrible-beautiful moment, that bitter-sweet impasse where you know that somebody is bullshitting you but they're doing it with such panache and conviction...no, it's because they say exactly what you want to hear, at that point in time.”
― Irvine Welsh, Porno

“i have laughed
more than daffodils
and cried more than June.”
― Sanober Khan

“But once in a while, you pick the right thing, the exact best thing. Every day, the moment you open your eyes and pull off your blankets, that's what you hope for. The sunshine on your face,warm enough to make you heart sing.”
― Sarah Ockler, Bittersweet

“Finishing a book is bittersweet. You spend days getting to know the characters. Learning their nuances, their faults, their loves, their lives. They become your friends, acquaintances, enemies. And after the story ends, you miss them. You look for them in your own life, wonder where they’ve gone, you forget that they aren’t real. You fall in love with the hero and dream of him at night. The strange girl becomes your best friend. Their heartaches become your heartaches. You laugh when they laugh. And cry when they die. Eventually you realise they aren’t a part of your world, you were just briefly visiting theirs.”
― Whimsical Enlightenment

“Halfway down the aisle, Jamie suddenly seemed to tire, and they stopped while she caught her breath...It was, I remembered thinking, the most difficult walk anyone ever had to make. In every way, a walk to remember.”
― Nicholas Sparks, A Walk to Remember

“It's a good story,' he said. He even grinned at me. 'I'll tell you.'

'Please,' I said.

And then he did.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“If there is an afterlife, I want my soul intact. And then maybe I'll see you there."I smiled, somehow calm now that I was facing something inevitable. I was getting the good-bye I'd always wanted. - Nikki”
― Brodi Ashton, Everneath

“If this is victory, then our hands are too small to hold it.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

“...I live with regrets - the bittersweet loss of innocence - the red track of the moon upon the lake - the inability to return and do it again...”
― John Geddes, A Familiar Rain

“A penny for my thoughts, oh no, I'll sell them for a dollar
They're worth so much more after I'm a goner
And maybe then you'll hear the words I been singin'
Funny when you're dead how people start listenin”
― Kimberly Perry, If I Die Young: Piano/Vocal/Guitar

“There were never strawberries
like the ones we had
that sultry afternoon
sitting on the step
of the open french window
facing each other
your knees held in mine
the blue plates in our laps
the strawberries glistening
in the hot sunlight
we dipped them in sugar
looking at each other
not hurrying the feast
for one to come
the empty plates laid on the stone together
with the two forks crossed
and I bent towards you

sweet in that air
in my arms
abandoned like a child
from your eager mouth
the taste of strawberries
in my memory
lean back again
let me love you

let the sun beat
on our forgetfulness
one hour of all
the heat intense
and summer lightning
on the Kilpatrick hills

let the storm wash the plates.”
― Edwin Morgan, The Second Life: Selected Poems

“I would stay away from him and leave him to go his own road where there would be other women, countless other women, who would probably give him as much physical pleasure as he had had with me. I wouldn’t care, or at least I told myself that I wouldn’t care, because none of them would ever own him—own any larger piece of him than I now did.”
― Ian Fleming, The Spy Who Loved Me

“Was it always to be like this? she wondered. A moment of joy followed by a new sorrow?”
― Soheir Khashoggi, Nadia's Song

“And you find some way to survive
And you find out you don't have to be happy at all..
To be happy you're alive.”
― Brian Yorkey

“Victory is always bittersweet.”
― Nadia Scrieva

“The sharp knife of a short life, well
I've had, just enough time.”
― Kimberly Perry

“I deserve my lollipop and I deserve my toothache.”
― Khayri R.R. Woulfe

“She said that everything that disappeared from our side went over to theirs, where they kept living normal lives, waiting for the things still lingering with us to join them, and make the world whole once more.”
― Alexandra Kleeman, Intimations: Stories

“he gathered antigonê close in his arms again. choking, his blood bright red on her white cheek. and now he lies dead with the dead, and she is his at last, his bride in the houses of the dead.”
― Sophocles, The Oedipus Cycle

“It means starflower," Sairu said. "The temple is named for the Gardens of Hulan."
"Oh," said the cat. "You don't say."
Sairu, startled by the tone of his voice, looked down. But he was gone.”
― Anne Elisabeth Stengl, Golden Daughter

“This is..." I couldn't come up with the words.
"My favorite place in town," he replied, and carefully we walked over to the edge of the bell tower. The sun was slowly sinking down between the rolling hills of the Catskills, purples and blues and pinks. "I've never been up here with anyone else."
My heart fluttered. "No one?"
He shook his head. "But I thought you'd appreciate it."
I glanced up at him as the setting sun made the harsh lines of his face softer, the blond of his hair more gold. This was a special place--- meant for a grand romantic gesture. It was a place wasted on me.
I was stealing all his heroine's moments, wasn't I?
It was a sobering thought.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“I am afraid to want anything. Someday, everything will be taken away, but I think I want this.”
― Brea Alepoú, Say I Do

“Hope. I should spit on the word. It had no place in my vocabulary. Yet here I was, hoping for something with Benito.”
― Brea Alepoú, Say I Do

“Anne's Will by Stewart Stafford

Young Shakespeare set off to London town,
To quill and ink his masterpiece plays,
Still, Anne Hathaway grew anxious;
Marriage and family rent twain ways.

He vowed to send back funds to them,
With a fledgling kiss, Will was gone,
Tearful goodbyes of wife and daughters,
Stratford shrank, cartwheels spun.

The distance honeyed homesickness,
The farther from hearth Will roamed,
The capital's theatres awaited him;
Words etched in stone in folio tome.

The absentee bard kept his word true;
Admirably providing for kin well,
Through a bitter, lonely aftertaste,
With only one truism to tell:

"For, aye, where'er there was a Will,
Truly, good Anne always hath a way."

© Stewart Stafford, 2024. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“In every story, I found a piece of my own heart.”
― Rendi Ansyah, Beyond the Bouquet: A Symphony of Love in Fifty Movements