The Notebook was written in 1996 by Nicholas Sparks, and 25 years later, it still lives on in our hearts.
Despite this being his first published novel, this didn’t prevent it from becoming a New York Times Best Seller in the very first week of its release. After that, The Notebook remained a bestseller for more than a year.
Sparks drew inspiration from the romantic history of his wife’s grandparents, who were married for over 60 years. He wanted to write about long romantic love and everything it encapsulates, which is how The Notebook was born.
The novel’s story follows the dramatic but profound love story of Noah Calhoun and Allison (Allie) Hamilton. In a nursing home, somewhere in North Carolina, an elderly man reads a love story to a female patient with dementia. He tells her about Noah, a lower-class young man who falls in love with Allie, born into a wealthy family.
Naturally, her parents disapprove of the relationship, which is why the couple eventually drifts apart. However, this isn’t enough to keep the two away from each other, as they eventually find their way back to one another through the years.
Here is a list of some of the most memorable, heartfelt, and soul-clenching love quotes from The Notebook, which will have you falling in love with the notion of love all over again.
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The Most Romantic Quotes From The Notebook
1. “I don’t remember how it started or how I wanted it to be, but somehow it evolved into this.”
2. “Life is simply a collection of little lives, each lived one day at a time; that each day should be spent finding beauty in flowers and poetry, and talking to animals – that a day spent with dreaming and sunsets and refreshing breezes cannot be bettered. But most of all, I learned that life is about sitting on benches next to ancient creeks with my hand on her knee and sometimes, on good days, for falling in love.”
3. “I think our love can do anything we want it to.”
4. “Passion and romance, perhaps, or maybe quiet conversations in candlelit rooms, or perhaps something as simple as not being second.”
5. “The scariest thing about distance is that you don’t know whether they’ll miss you or forget you.”
6. “You are Hannah, a lover of life, a strength to those who shared in your friendships. You are a dream, a creator of happiness, an artist who has touched a thousand souls. You’ve led a full life and wanted for nothing because your needs are spiritual, and you have only to look inside you. You are kind and loyal, and you are able to see beauty where others do not. You are a teacher of wonderful lessons, a dreamer of better things.”
7. “How would it feel, I remember wondering, to be always together, yet forever apart?”
8. “Even the creek is still. In the darkness, it looks like empty space, and I find that I’m drawn to its mystery.”
9. “But as he shook her hand and met those striking emerald eyes, he knew before he’d taken his next breath that she was the one he could spend the rest of his life looking for but never find again.”
10. “But he had been in love once, that he knew. Once and only once, and a long time ago. And it had changed him forever. Perfect love did that to a person, and this had been perfect.”
Heart-Touching Quotes from The Notebook
11. “Give a day’s work for a day’s pay. Anything less is stealing.”
12. “Our lives can’t be measured by our final years.”
13. “It’s a terrible thing to outlive your child, a tragedy I wish upon no one.”
14. “Silence is pure. Silence is holy. It draws people together because only those who are comfortable with each other can sit without speaking. This is the great paradox.”
15. “For we both know my prognosis and what it will mean to us. I see your tears, and I worry more about you than I do about me because I fear the pain I know you will go through. There are no words to express my sorrow for this, and I am at a loss for words.”
16. “We will find each other again, and maybe the stars will have changed, and we will not only love each other in that time, but for all the times we’ve had before.”
17. “He especially liked to look at the trees and their reflections in the river. North Carolina trees are beautiful in deep autumn: greens, yellows, reds, oranges, every shade in between, their dazzling colours glowing with the sun.”
18. “Dusk … is just an illusion because the sun is either above the horizon or below it. And that means that day and night are linked in a way that few things are; there cannot be one without the other, yet they cannot exist at the same time. How would it feel … to be always together, yet forever apart?”
19. “She couldn’t think of anyone else who remotely resembled him. He was so complicated, almost contradictory in so many ways, yet simple, a strangely erotic combination. On the surface, he was a country boy, home from war, and he probably saw himself in those terms. Yet there was so much more to him.”
20. “I am who I am because of you. You are every reason, every hope, and every dream I’ve ever had, and no matter what happens to us in the future, every day we are together is the greatest day of my life. I will always be yours.”
Timeless Quotes About Love and Life
21. “Sometimes he wondered if man’s instincts had changed in that time and always concluded that they hadn’t. At least in the basic, most primal ways. As far as he could tell, man had always been aggressive, always striving to dominate, trying to control the world and everything in it.”
22. “He wants to be a doctor completely devoted to his patients and a man completely devoted to his family. He cannot be both, for there aren’t enough hours, but he has yet to learn this.”
23. “It’s just that sometimes, our future is dictated by what we are, as opposed to what we want.”
24. “You are the answer to every prayer I’ve offered. You are a song, a dream, a whisper, and I don’t know how I could have lived without you for as long as I have. I love you, Allie, more than you can ever imagine. I always have, and I always will.”
25. “Natural things gave back more than they took, and their sounds always brought him back to the way man was supposed to be.”
26. “When I see you, my darling, in the morning before showers or in your studio covered with paint with your hair matted and tired eyes, I know that you are the most beautiful woman in the world.”
27. “I could be whatever you want. You just tell me what you want, and I’m gonna be that for you.”
28. “She remembered sitting beneath the tree on a hot July day with someone who looked at her with a longing that took everything else away. And it had been at that moment that she’d first fallen in love.”
29. “As he shook her hand and met those striking emerald eyes, he knew before he’d taken his next breath that she was the one he could spend the rest of his life looking for but never again. She seemed that good, that perfect, while a summer wind blew through the trees.”
30. “Realizing that if she quit now, she would always wonder what would happen. And she didn’t think she could live with that.”
The Notebook By Nicholas Sparks – Love Quotes
31. “You can’t live your life for other people. You’ve got to do what’s right for you, even if it hurts some people you love.”
32. “The romantics would call this a love story, the cynics would call it a tragedy. In my mind, it’s a little bit of both…”
33. “The sun has come up, and I am sitting by a window that is foggy with the breath of a life gone by.”
34. “What you said was beautiful. It takes a poet to talk the way you do, and like I said, you’re the only poet I’ve ever met.”
35. “The first time you fall in love, it changes your life forever, and no matter how hard you try, the feeling never goes away. And no matter what you do, she’ll stay with you forever.”
36. “Don’t choose the better guy; choose the guy who makes you a better woman.”
37. “She cursed herself for forgetting something as important as creating beauty.”
38. “The scariest thing about distance is you don’t know whether they’ll miss you or forget about you.”
39. “I know, but no matter what I choose, I have to live with it. Forever. I have to be able to go forward and not look back anymore. Can you understand that?”
40. “It was a terrible thing for a girl to learn. That status is more important than feelings.”
Last Sayings form The Notebook
41. “Poets knew that isolation in nature, far from people and things man-made, was good for the soul, and he’d always identified with poets.”
42. “It’s the possibility that keeps me going, not the guarantee, a sort of wager on my part.”
43. “You are my best friend as well as my lover, and I do not know which side of you I enjoy the most. I treasure each side, just as I have treasured our life together.”
44. “I couldn’t sleep last night because I know that it’s over between us. I’m not bitter anymore because I know that what we had was real. And if in some distant place in the future we see each other in our new lives, I’ll smile at you with joy and remember how we spent the summer beneath the trees, learning from each other and growing in love. The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds, and that’s what you’ve given me
45. “It was a terrible thing for a girl to learn. That status is more important than feelings.”
46. “We are in the final minutes in the day of our lives, and the clock is ticking. Loudly. I wonder if I am the only one who can hear it.”
47. “If not for my diaries, I would swear I had lived only half as long as I have. Long periods of my life seem to have vanished. And now I read the passages and wonder who I was when I wrote them, for I cannot remember the events of my life. There are times I sit and wonder where it all has gone.”
48. “The sun has long since set, and the thief is about to come, and there is nothing I can do to stop it. So I stare at her and wait and live a lifetime in these last remaining moments.”
49. “It’s just that sometimes our future is dictated by what we are, as opposed to what we want.”
50. “Although you may call me a dreamer, a fool, or any other thing, I believe that anything is possible.”
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