Key Insights & Memorable Quotes
Below are the most popular and impactful highlights and quotes from The Last Thing He Told Me:
“This is the terrible thing about a tragedy. It isn't with you every minute. You forget it, and then you remember it again.”
“He never understood that I wasn’t scared of someone leaving me, I was scared that the wrong person would stay.”
“This is the thing about good and evil. They aren't so far apart - and they often start from the same valiant place of wanting something to be different.”
“How do you explain it when you find in someone what you’ve been waiting for your whole life? Do you call it fate? It feels lazy to call it fate. It’s more like finding your way home—where home is a place you secretly hoped for, a place you imagined, but where you’d never before been. Home. When you weren’t sure you’d ever get to have one.”
“There are parts I wish didn’t exist, parts I can’t look away from now. In one way or another, this is the deal we all sign when we love someone. For better or worse. It’s the deal we have to sign again and again to keep that love. We don’t turn away from the parts of someone we don’t want to see. However quickly or long it takes to see them. We accept them if we are strong enough. Or we accept them enough to not let the bad parts become the entire story.”
“The could-have been boys still love you.”
“Most people don't want to hear the thing that will make it work better... They want to hear what will make it easier.”
“People don’t tend to work that way. We have our opinion and we filter information into a paradigm that supports it.”
“Which is when I understand, in a flash, what I’ve been doing wrong with her—what I’ve been doing wrong in how I’ve been trying to connect with her. I thought if I were nice enough, sweet enough, she’d understand she could count on me. But that’s not how you learn you can count on someone. You learn it in the moments when everyone’s too tired to be sweet, too tired to try hard. You learn it by what they do for you then.”
“Einstein said, So far as the theories of mathematics are about reality, they are not certain; so far as they are certain, they are not about reality.”
“We forget all sorts of things that no one helps us remember,”
“This is the terrible thing about a tragedy. It isn’t with you every minute. You forget it, and then you remember it again. And you see it with a stark quality: This is what is required of you now, just to get along.”
“That sometimes you find your way to the place that wants you most.”
“Maybe we are all fools, one way or another, when it comes to seeing the totality of the people who love us—the people we try to love.”
“Sometimes your passion takes work and you shouldn't give up on it just because it isn't easy...[Owen Michaels, as quoted by daughter Bailey]”
“Watching my grandfather work taught me that not everything was fluid. There were certain things that you hit from different angles, but you never gave up on. You did the work that was needed, wherever that work took you.”
“You cannot make a deal with the devil and expect it to turn out okay.”
“Owen isn’t who I thought he was, at least not in the details. There are parts I wish didn’t exist, parts I can’t look away from now. In one way or another, this is the deal we all sign when we love someone. For better or worse. It’s the deal we have to sign again and again to keep that love. We don’t turn away from the parts of someone we don’t want to see. However quickly or long it takes to see them. We accept them if we are strong enough. Or we accept them enough to not let the bad parts become the entire story.”
“This is the thing about good and evil. They aren’t so far apart—and they often start from the same valiant place of wanting something to be different.”
“you fill in the blanks—with stories and memories from the people who love you.”
“It’s never about someone else the moment you realize it is up to you to get yourself to a better place. It’s only about figuring out how to get there.”
“...there are certain things we can't erase, certain things that we reveal to the people closest to us despite what we may or may not know we are telling them.[Hannah Hall]”
“It’s a terrible thing to know everything about someone long after you want to.”
“Each species of wood has its own distinctive patterns and colors, which are revealed when the bowl is turned. —Philip Moulthrop”
“But that’s not how you learn you can count on someone. You learn it in the moments when everyone’s too tired to be sweet, too tired to try hard. You learn it by what they do for you then.”
“In one way or another, this is the deal we all sign when we love someone. For better or worse. It’s the deal we have to sign again and again to keep that love. We don’t turn away from the parts of someone we don’t want to see. However quickly or long it takes to see them. We accept them if we are strong enough. Or we accept them enough to not let the bad parts become the entire story. Because”
“Maybe we are all fools, one way or another, when it comes to seeing the totality of the people who love us--the people we try to love.[Hannah Hall]”
“problems came when I tried to fit myself into someone else’s life,”
“You may have to go with English,” Bailey says. “Einstein said, So far as the theories of mathematics are about reality, they are not certain; so far as they are certain, they are not about reality.” Bailey tilts her head. “Still waiting on the English there, Professor,” she says. “It basically means, we don’t know shit about anything,” he says.”
“This was something we sometimes did on days we got home late—on days we were too tired to get into the big stuff. We each picked one thing from the day to tell each other about. One good thing from our separate lives.”
