Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“So do yourself a favor and learn how to grab life by the balls, dear. Don’t be so tied up trying to do the right thing when the smart thing is so painfully clear.”

When you’re given an opportunity to change your life, be ready to do whatever it takes to make it happen. The world doesn’t give things, you take things.

There are people who see a beautiful flower and rush over to pick it. They want to hold it in their hands, they want to own it. They want the flower’s beauty to be theirs, to be within their possession, their control.

You have to find a job that makes your heart feel big instead of one that makes it feel small.

People think that intimacy is about sex. But intimacy is about truth. When you realize you can tell someone your truth, when you can show yourself to them, when you stand in front of them bare and their response is “You’re safe with me”—that’s intimacy.

You recognize that everyone is playing everyone else. It’s only fair that he’s playing you at the same time as you’re playing him. You reconcile these facts by realizing that what you both want from each other is complementary.

“Isn’t it awfully convenient,” Harry added, “that when men make the rules, the one thing that’s looked down on the most is the one thing that would bear them the greatest threat? Imagine if every single woman on the planet wanted something in exchange when she gave up her body. You’d all be ruling the place. An armed populace. Only men like me would stand a chance against you. And that’s the last thing those assholes want, a world run by people like you and me.”

You do not know how fast you have been running, how hard you have been working, how truly exhausted you are, until someone stands behind you and says, “It’s OK, you can fall down now. I’ll catch you.” So I fell down. And Harry caught me.

And now that I don’t have her, and I have more money than I could ever use in this lifetime, and my name is cemented in Hollywood history, and I know how hollow it is, I am kicking myself for every single second I chose it over loving her proudly. But that’s a luxury. You can do that when you’re rich and famous. You can decide that wealth and renown are worthless when you have them.

You should know this about the rich: they always want to get richer. It is never boring, getting your hands on more money.

“That’s because you both want the same thing. You, of all people, should know that you can’t tell a single thing about a person’s true character if you both want the same thing. That’s like a dog and a cat getting along because they both want to kill the mouse.”

She was always jealous of the men, worried she couldn’t compete. I was jealous of the women, worried I wouldn’t compare.

The tabloids called us “America’s Favorite Double-Daters.” I even heard rumors that the four of us were swingers, which wasn’t that crazy for that period of time. It really makes you think, doesn’t it? That people were so eager to believe we were swapping spouses but would have been scandalized to know we were monogamous and queer?

And I started crying when I realized those men and women were willing to fight for a dream I had never even allowed myself to envision. A world where we could be ourselves, without fear and without shame. They were braver and more hopeful than I was. There were simply no other words for it.

And taking pride in your beauty is a damning act. Because you allow yourself to believe that the only thing notable about yourself is something with a very short shelf life.”

It’s always been fascinating to me how things can be simultaneously true and false, how people can be good and bad all in one, how someone can love you in a way that is beautifully selfless while serving themselves ruthlessly.

“People are messy, and love can be ugly. I’m inclined to always err on the side of compassion.”

Women have sex for intimacy. Men have sex for pleasure. That’s what culture tells us.

I thought of how sublime it was to awaken my own desire, to realize I liked sex, that it wasn’t just about what men wanted, that it was about me, too. I thought of how I wanted to put that seed of a thought into other women’s brains. I thought of how there might be other women out there scared of their own pleasure, of their own power. I thought of what it would mean to have just one woman go home to her husband and say, “Give me what he gave her.”

Guilt is a feeling I’ve never made much peace with. I find that when it rears its head, it brings an army. When I feel guilty for one thing, I start to see all the other things I should feel guilty for.

“There’s a difference between sexuality and sex. I used sex to get what I wanted. Sex is just an act. Sexuality is a sincere expression of desire and pleasure. That I always kept for Celia.”

Which is about the cruelest thing you can do to someone you love, give them just enough good to make them stick through a hell of a lot of bad.

Sometimes divorce isn’t an earth-shattering loss. Sometimes it’s just two people waking up out of a fog.

I loved being able to show a part of myself that I had long buried. I was happy to find that when I dug it up, that part was still there, waiting for me.

I told her every single day that her life had been the world’s greatest gift to me, that I believed I was put on earth not to make movies or wear emerald-green gowns and wave at crowds but to be her mother.

“Nobody deserves anything,” Evelyn says. “It’s simply a matter of who’s willing to go and take it for themselves.

You don’t have to make yourself OK for a good mother; a good mother makes herself OK for you. And my mother has always been a good mother, a great mother.

When you dig just the tiniest bit beneath the surface, everyone’s love life is original and interesting and nuanced and defies any easy definition.