36 Quotes That Will Make Your Breakup Better, Promise!

Katie Buckleitner/Cosmopolitan

Breakups–as Amy Poehler aptly put it in Yes, Please–are so universal that "You aren't allowed to feel special, but no one knows the specific ways you are in pain." Yes, splitting up has and will happen to most people, but that doesn't stop it from feeling crushingly lonely sometimes.

Even if all your friends might be happily paired up or contently single right now, that doesn't mean there aren't books, movies, songs, and celebrity interviews that somehow summarize your heartbreak better than you could. Here are 36 breakup quotes that will help get you through it (or at least make you feel better right now):

For when you want permission to feel everything:

1. “There are many stages of grief. It’s sad, something coming to an end. It cracks you open, in a way—cracks you open to feeling. When you try to avoid the pain, it creates greater pain.”–Jennifer Aniston, Vanity Fair

2. "Let yourself go and let yourself obsess over every little detail of the breakup and the relationship. You will need to do this for yourself. You will need to allow your mind to take it all in so that by the time you get back up on your feet, you know how you feel.” –Lauren Conrad

3. “It’s no good. When someone leaves you, apart from missing them, apart from the fact that the whole little world you’ve created together collapses, and that everything you see or do reminds you of them, the worst is the thought that they tried you out and, in the end, the whole sum of parts adds up to you got stamped REJECT by the one you love.” ―Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones's Diary

4. “Sometimes I believe that love dies but hope springs eternal. Sometimes I believe that hope dies but love springs eternal. Sometimes I believe that sex plus guilt equals love, and sometimes I believe that sex plus guilt equals good sex. Sometimes I believe that love is as natural as the tides, and sometimes I believe that love is an act of will. Sometimes I believe that some people are better at love than others, and sometimes I believe that everyone is faking it. Sometimes I believe that love is essential, and sometimes I believe that the only reason love is essential is that otherwise you spend all your time looking for it.” –Nora Ephron, Heartburn

5. Choices were easy to make until you realised how long life could be.” ―Emma Straub, Modern Lovers

6. "When I was first going through my separation, someone said to me, 'It will take you half as long as you were in the relationship before you'll feel better.' And I wanted to knock them out cold across the table. Because, of course, I was in agony. And the last thing I wanted to think was that I was going to stay that way for a long time. But interestingly enough, it is over four years later–we were together eight year–and I finally feel like, cool. I feel better." –Uma Thurman on Ethan Hawke, Redbook

For when you're second-guessing the breakup:

7. “Never love anybody who treats you like you’re ordinary.”–Oscar Wilde

8. “You are not a terrible person for wanting to break up with someone you love. You don’t need a reason to leave. Wanting to leave is enough. Leaving doesn’t mean you’re incapable of real love or that you’ll never love anyone else again. It doesn’t mean you’re morally bankrupt or psychologically demented or a nymphomaniac. It means you wish to change the terms of one particular relationship. That’s all. Be brave enough to break your own heart.”–Cheryl Strayed, “DEAR SUGAR: Tiny Beautiful Things”

9. “When things are shaky and nothing is working, we might realise that we are on the verge of something. We might realise that this is a very vulnerable and tender place, and that tenderness can go either way. We can shut down and feel resentful or we can touch in on that throbbing quality.” –Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart

10. “I did not deceive him, he did not deceive me, I did not leave him, he did not leave me, I freed him, he freed me.” ―Sharon Olds, Stag's Leap: Poems

11. “I look at him sometimes for an unguarded moment and see a tall, crooked man with yellowing teeth and a leer. I see new N. Bad N. Vulnerable to anyone with a vagina. I also see Good N, just a glimpse, here and there. And Noncommittal N, an extra in his own life, just hitting his marks and looking well pressed. He's become a whole group of people, a cache of ghosts tugging at my sleeve.” ―Suzanne Finnamore, Split: A Memoir of Divorce

12. “Sooner or later, we all sit down to a banquet of consequences.” –Nancy Horan, Under the Wide and Starry Sky

13. “I used to think–and given the way we ended up, maybe I still do–that all relationships need the kind of violent shove that a crush brings, just to get you started and to push you over the humps. And then, when the energy from that shove has gone and you come to something approaching a halt, you have to look around and see what you've got. It could be something completely different, it could be something roughly the same, but gentler and calmer, or it could be nothing at all.” ―Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

14. “How often we set this trap for ourselves. I had learned to act as if I were the person I wished to be: an ascetically self-sufficient woman, a woman without needs, a woman immune to disappointment. And I found or urged myself to be attracted to people whom only such a woman should love.” ―Melissa Febos, Abandon Me: Memoirs

15. “The truth of relationship healthiness is that water seeks its own level. If you want to know what is missing in you, what unfinished business you have, what your inner struggles are, you need not look further than your partner. If you listen carefully and look closely, usually your choice of mates will tell you what you need to know about yourself. As you grow and change, your choice of mate continues to reflect what you still need to work on.”―Susan J. Elliott, Getting Past Your Breakup: How to Turn a Devastating Loss Into the Best Thing That Ever Happened to You

For when you need to move on, but can't:

16. “You get used to not calling someone at night to tell them how your day was. You replace these old habits with new habits, like texting your friends in a group chat all day and planning fun dinner parties and going out on adventures with your girlfriends, and then all of a sudden one day you're in London and you realize you've been in the same place as your ex for two weeks and you're fine. And you hope he's fine.” –Taylor Swift, Elle

17. “Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams.” –Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

18. “Finally, four months after the end, I found myself spending a weekend in the country, and I stepped outside and away from my companions, onto a gravel path, and in the dimming pink of the sunset I began along my way. It was simple—one foot in front of the other, hands swinging at my sides—but I thought, rather dramatically, I will remember this moment all my life...I had made the choice to face the world—trees, sky, even a rude, shoe-thieving neighbourhood dog named Rico—on my own, with the power and presence of someone who can tolerate herself.” –Lena Dunham, Vogue

19. “The thing about being single is, you should cherish it. Because, in a week, or a lifetime, of being alone, you may only get one moment. One moment, when you're not tied up in a relationship with anyone. A parent, a pet, a sibling, a friend. One moment, when you stand on your own. Really, truly single. And then...it's gone.” –Alice, How to Be Single

For when you struggle with self-love:

20. "You’ve got to value yourself and know that you’re worth everything. And until you value yourself enough and love yourself enough to know that, you can’t really have a healthy relationship.” –Jennifer Lopez, Glamour

21. "One of the best guides to how to be self-loving is to give ourselves the love we are often dreaming about receiving from others. There was a time when I felt lousy about my over-forty body, saw myself as too fat, too this, or too that. Yet I fantasised about finding a lover who would give me the gift of being loved as I am. It is silly, isn't it, that I would dream of someone else offering to me the acceptance and affirmation I was withholding from myself. This was a moment when the maxim "You can never love anybody if you are unable to love yourself" made clear sense. And I add, "Do not expect to receive the love from someone else you do not give yourself."– bell hooks, All About Love

22. “You see a lot of people play this blame game. Blame, blame, blame. You know? And it's a really easy thing to do, and I'm certainly guilty of it. [You have to] look at yourself and go, 'What part of this do I need to own? Which part of this is my responsibility?' And that's the painful work that you have to go through to hopefully get some real life knowledge out of it." –Reese Witherspoon, Elle

23. “If someone does not want me it is not the end of the world. But if I do not want me. the world is nothing but endings.” –Nayyirah Waheed, Salt.

24. “Being single used to mean that nobody wanted you. Now it means you’re pretty sexy and you’re taking your time deciding how you want your life to be and who you want to spend it with.”–Carrie Bradshaw, Sex and the City

25. "It's what life handed me, and I'm OK with it. I know wholeheartedly that I'm a really good partner. I think I'm a really good girlfriend, and I think that I could be a really good wife. I know that I love being able to give my love out to someone. I know there is somebody great out there for me." —Jennifer Love Hewitt, USA Today

26. “People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.”–Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

27. "When I was going through a bit of a heartbreak a little while ago, I said to a friend, 'Wow, this really hurts!' And he said to me, 'That just shows you what your capacity for loving is.' I would rather have my heart broken a thousand times than never to love at all. I have so much love to give—I'm not empty of love, I'm full of love." –Cameron Diaz, InStyle

For when you want proof that things will get so much better:

28. "I'm not sure what the future holds, but I do know that I'm going to be positive and not wake up feeling desperate. As my dad said 'Nic, it is what it is, it’s not what it should have been, not what it could have been, it is what it is.’” –Nicole Kidman

29. “Been through some bad shit, I should be a sad bitch/Who woulda thought it'd turn me to a savage?" –Ariana Grande, “7 Rings”

30. “In every one of those situations, as hard—and sometimes embarrassing—as it was, I learned so much about myself. Those relationships provided me with lessons that got me to where I am right now. For that, I’m grateful.” –Halle Berry, 2017 City Summit and Gala

31. “Grief is love's souvenir. It's our proof that we once loved. Grief is the receipt we wave in the air that says to the world: Look! Love was once mine. I love well. Here is my proof that I paid the price.” ― Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior

32. “I didn’t know if that was the end of it or know if we’d be back together again, but I knew that wherever I was going, I was on the right path...You get time to be yourself. You get time to grow up. I think if you’re growing up attached to another person, you never really get solid as your own being.” –Miley Cyrus, Sirius XM Hits 1 radio channel.

33. "There are two quotes that I want to say. One is a Dylan Thomas poem 'Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light,' which is one of my favorite poems, it just strikes a chord in me. And also Robert Frost's 'The only way out is through'. People have to go through things in order to become the person that they are today, and that's that."—Sarah Hyland on The Meredith Vieira Show

34. I think the thing that I have learned is that a bad love experience is no reason to fear a new love experience...Everybody has bad relationships and, at the end of the day, they are just a great way to set yourself up for a good relationship."–Anne Hathaway, Telegraph

35. "I definitely feel much more comfortable in my own skin. I feel sexier. I think in my twenties–it’s like you’re trying too hard to figure everything out…I’m starting to come into my own. It’s like a new phase." –Katie Holmes, Elle

36. My life basically blew up in my face. And now I’m in this new life, and it’s pretty awesome, I have to say. I’m so inspired. Everything just feels new." –Gwen Stefani, Carson Daly on 97.1 AMP Radio.

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