Quotes that will actually make your breakup suddenly bearable

 Understatement of the century: Breakups are The Worst. Just when you become comfortable talking to someone every day, showing them that weird pimple on your ass, and saying "I love you"—POOF! Gone is your relationship, best friend, and all sense of normality. It sucks.

But before you put on your Big Girl pants and grieve the relationship, you’ve gotta embrace all the stages of the breakup, my friend. This means letting the waterworks flow, twisting the knife in your heart just a liiiiitle bit deeper, and then mourning the loss of your person.

Because sorry to say, it's gotta hurt a lil bit before it can get better.

The good news: We've curated a list of 60 cry-worthy breakup quotes that will help with those very moments. They're plucked from your fave movies, TV shows, songs, pieces of literature, and everything in between.

Promise, it’s only a matter of time until your heart is healed and ready to move on.

For when you just really, really need to belt it out:

1. “And I know we weren't perfect but I've never felt this way for no one. And I just can't imagine how you could be so okay now that I'm gone. Guess you didn't mean what you wrote in that song about me, because you said forever now I drive alone past your street.” —Olivia Rodrigo, "Driver’s License"

2. “So, I made you think that I would always stay. I said some things that I should never say. Yeah, I broke your heart like someone did to mine, and now you won't love me for a second time.” —The Weeknd, "Save Your Tears"

3. “Now suddenly you're asking for it back. Could you tell me, where'd you get the nerve? Yeah, you could say you miss all that we had. But I don't really care how bad it hurts when you broke me first.” —Tate McRae, "You Broke Me First"

4. “I know she thinkin' now she found herself a winner. I know you fucked her on the counter right before you cooked the dinner. I know you think about me when you kiss her. I left a taste in your mouth, can she taste me now? I'm bitter.” —Fletcher, "Bitter"

5. “Why would you ever kiss me? I'm not even half as pretty. You gave her your sweater, it's just polyester. But you like her better. Wish I were Heather.” —Conan Gray, "Heather"

6. “But we were something, don't you think so? Roaring twenties, tossing pennies in the pool. And if my wishes came true, it would've been you. In my defense, I have none for never leaving well enough alone. But it would've been fun if you would've been the one.” —Taylor Swift, "The 1"

7. “It’s been a long time, and seeing the shape of your name still spells out pain. It wasn’t right the way it all went down, looks like you know that now. Yes I got your letter, yes I’m doing better. It cut deep to know you, right to the bone. Yes I got your letter, yes I’m doing better, I know that it’s over, I don’t need your closure.” —Taylor Swift, "Closure"

8. “I know, you know, we know you weren’t down for forever and it’s fine. I know, you know, we know we weren’t meant for each other and it’s fine. But if the world was ending, you’d come over, right?” —JP Saxe and Julia Michaels, “If the World Was Ending”

9. “We’d always go into it blindly. I needed to lose you to find me. This dancing was killing me softly. I needed to hate you to love me.” —Selena Gomez, "Lose You to Love Me”

10. “Now the day bleeds into nightfall and you’re not here to get me through it all. I let my guard down and then you pulled the rug. I was getting kinda used to being someone you loved.” —Lewis Capaldi, "Someone You Loved"

11. I can buy myself flowers, write my name in the sand. Talk to myself for hours, say things you don't understand. I can take myself dancing, and I can hold my own hand. Yeah, I can love me better than you can." —Miley Cyrus, "Flowers"

12. "Bittersweet memories, that is all I'm taking with me. So goodbye, please don't cry. We both know I'm not what you need." —Dolly Parton, "I Will Always Love You"

For when you want permission to feel everything (and I mean everything):

1. I'm letting you go. Cause if we stay together, Will, we're gonna be miserable. I'm gonna hold you back from all these incredible dreams that you have. And then eventually you're totally gonna hate me for it.” —Will and Emily, Definitely, Maybe

2. “You broke me. You broke my heart, and I hate you because I'm still in love with you,” —Carrie, The Carrie Diaries

3. “The reason it hurts so much to separate is because our souls are connected." —The Notebook, by Nicholas Sparks

4. “You were red and you liked me cause I was blue. You touched me and suddenly I was a lilac sky, and you decided purple just wasn’t for you.” —Halsey, "Colors"

5. “Time won't fly, it's like I'm paralyzed by it. I'd like to be my old self again, but I'm still trying to find it. After plaid shirt days and nights when you made me your own, now you mail back my things and I walk home alone.”—Taylor Swift, "All Too Well"

6. “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

 

 

 

7. "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

8. “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

9. “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

10. "Choices were easy to make until you realized how long life could be.” —Emma Straub, Modern Lovers

11. "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 years–and I finally feel like, cool. I feel better." —Uma Thurman, on Ethan Hawke, Redbook

12. "Pain makes you stronger, fear makes you braver, heartbreak makes you wiser." —Drake

13. “Who do you think you are, runnin' 'round leaving scars, collecting your jar of hearts and tearing love apart? You're gonna catch a cold from the ice inside your soul, so don't come back for me. Don't come back at all.” —Christina Perri, "Jar of Hearts"

For when you're second-guessing the breakup:

1. “If we were meant to be together, we would be together.” –Leo, The Vow

2. “I am beginning to feel like the only way to truly get over someone that you cared a lot about is to start a new chapter.” —Mindy, The Mindy Project

3. “It was really tough. I don’t know if I’m over it yet. I think that I’m definitely in another place and I think we’ve definitely went our separate ways. I love her and I want her to be awesome, but there are things that remind me of her.” —Justin Bieber, about Selena Gomez

4. “Never love anybody who treats you like you’re ordinary.” —Oscar Wilde

5. “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”

6. “When things are shaky and nothing is working, we might realize that we are on the verge of something. We might realize 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

 

 

7. “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 [/pullquote]

8. “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

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

10. “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

11. “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

12. “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

13. "I don't feel anything, isn't that great! I never thought about how I would feel; I only ever thought about you. I only wanted to make you happy. I never thought I was good enough for you... But Alex, you're not good enough for me!" —Rose to Alex, The Mirror Has Two Faces

14. “Told myself that you were right for me, but felt so lonely in your company.” —Gotye, "Somebody That I Used to Know"

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

1. “You can love someone so much...But you can never love people as much as you can miss them.” —Paper Towns, by John Green

2. “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

3. “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

4. “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 neighborhood dog named Rico—on my own, with the power and presence of someone who can tolerate herself.” —Lena Dunham, Vogue

5. “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

6. "The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving.” —Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

7. “One day, you'll look to see I've gone, for tomorrow may rain, so I'll follow the sun. Some day you'll know I was the one, but tomorrow may rain, so, I'll follow the sun.” —The Beatles, "I'll Follow the Sun

8. “I've been afraid of changin' 'cause I've built my life around you. But time makes you bolder, even children get older, and I'm getting older too.” —Fleetwood Mac, "Landslide"

  

 

 

 

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