241 Quotes by Hanya Yanagihara

When Jacob was a baby, I would find myself feeling more assured with each month he lived, as if the longer he stayed in this world, the more deeply he would become anchored to it, as if by being alive, he was staking claim to life itself.

He envied this in them, this ability they had to still be awestruck, the faith they maintained that life, adulthood, would keep presenting them with astonishing experiences, that their marvellous years were not behind them.

All ethics and morals are culturally relative. And Esme's reaction taught me that while cultural relativism is an easy concept to process intellectually, it is not, for many, an easy one to remember.

I know my life's meaningful because"- and here he stopped, and looked shy, and was silent for a moment before he continued- "because I'm a good friend. i love my friends, and I care about them, and I think I make them happy.

Could you have a real friendship if some part of you was always expecting betrayal?

He got to see his friends differently, not as just appendages to his life but as distinct characters inhabiting their own stories; he felt sometimes that he was seeing them for the first time, even after so many years of knowing them.

I want to be alone," he told him."I understand," Willem said. "We'll be alone together.

When he worked on this painting, he felt sometimes as if he were flying, as if the world of galleries and parties and other artists and ambitions had shrunk to a pinpoint beneath him, something so small he could kick it away from himself like a soccer ball, watch it spin off into some distant orbit that had nothing to do with him.

When he had promised himself that he wouldn't try to repair Jude, he had forgotten that to solve someone is to want to repair them: to diagnose a problem and then not try to fix that problem seemed not only neglectful but immoral.