Last Updated on March 21, 2023 by Louisa
Our Chemical Hearts is a moving young adult and coming-of-age novel story written by Krystal Sutherland. As well as having a moving and compelling storyline, it’s a novel of inspiring prose and inspiring ideas about love, grief and moving on.
The story follows two main characters, Henry Page, a boy who aspires to be the editor of his high school’s newspaper, and then Grace Town, the new girl in school. The pair is chosen to become the Editors for the school newspaper, forcing them to work together.
The storyline follows how Henry, little by little, falls in love with Grace. As their romance blossoms, their pair learn what it means to fall in love and share their philosophies on life, death and everything in between.
If you’re looking for some moving Our Chemical Hearts quotes about love, grief, moving on or perhaps something to make you laugh, then these are the best ones!
Our Chemical Hearts Quotes About Love
Our Chemical Hearts is a hopeless romantic story, so it would only be fitting to start with love quotes from Our Chemical Hearts…
“Love doesn’t need to last a lifetime for it to be real. You can’t judge the quality of love by the length of time it lasts. Everything dies, love included. Sometimes it dies with a person, sometimes it dies on its own. The greatest love story ever told doesn’t have to be about two people who spent their whole lives together. It might be about a love that lasted two weeks or two months or two years, but burned brighter and hotter and more brilliantly than any other love before or after. Don’t mourn a failed love; there is no such thing. All love is equal in the brain.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“Just because a love ends doesn’t mean it wasn’t real.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“They’ve poisoned you with this ‘love is patient, love is kind’ bullshit since you were a kid. But love is scientific, man. I mean, it’s really just a chemical reaction in the brain. Sometimes that reaction lasts a lifetime, repeating itself over and over again. And sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it goes supernova and then starts to fade. We’re all just chemical hearts. Does that make love any less brilliant? I don’t think so.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“Strangeness is a necessary ingredient in beauty.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“I have never met anyone that I wanted in my life that way before.
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
But you.
I could make an exception for you.”
“The insane rush of endorphins that flooded my system the moment my phone vibrated and her name popped up on screen was worrying. I’d never been addicted to anything before, but I thought maybe this is what it felt like to be a junkie in desperate need of a hit. “Edward Cullen, you poor, miserable bastard,” I said as I locked my phone screen and stared at the ceiling. “I should not have judged you so harshly.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“Grace Town was a chemical explosion inside my heart. She was a star that’d gone supernova. For a few fleeting moments there was light and heat and pain, brighter than a galaxy, and in her wake she left nothing but darkness. But the death of stars provides the building blocks of life. We’re all made of star stuff. We’re all made of Grace Town.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“Because I never realized that you could fall in love with humans the same way you fall in love with songs. How the tune of them could mean nothing to you at first, an unfamiliar melody, but quickly turn into a symphony carved across your skin; a hymn in the web of your veins; a harmony stitched into the lining of your soul.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“Because it seems like a lot of hassle, liking someone. Your brain runs hot, the cogs inside your mind jarring together until all the oil of your thoughts is burned away. The fire spreads to your chest, where it chars your lungs and turns your heart to embers. And right when you think the flames have burned away everything but your skeleton, the spark skips from your bones to immolate not only your flesh, but your entire life.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“It’s the end of the Earth and the death of the universe that give me the insane courage to say that I am yours, if you want me.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“I wondered, in that moment, if it was possible for human beings to go supernova—my atoms felt like they were emitting a shock wave of heat and light as they came unstuck from each other.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“I wondered, in that moment, if it was possible for human beings to go supernova—my atoms felt like they were emitting a shock wave of heat and light as they came unstuck from each other.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“Grace was my drug of choice, and tonight the dealer was giving out hits for free. I’d stay until I overdosed.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
Our Chemical Hearts Quotes About Grief
One of the key themes in Our Chemical Hearts is depression and mental health issues. Krystal Sutherland writes some inspiring quotes about grief in Our Chemical Hearts. Here are just a few snippets…
“The best thing the universe ever gave us is that we’ll all be forgotten. […] I kinda like the idea. That when we die, despite any pain or fear or embarrassment we experienced during our lives, despite any heartbreak or grief, we get to be dispersed back into nothingness. It makes me feel brave, knowing I’ll get a blank slate at the end. You get a brief glimmer of consciousness to do with what you will and then it’s given back to the universe again. I’m not religious, but even I can appreciate that that’s redemption, on the grandest scale. Oblivion isn’t scary; it’s the closest thing to genuine absolution of sin that I can imagine.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“I was amazed at how quickly a person could become an essential part of your life.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“You know how you can have the most exhausting day and you can’t wait to get home and fall into bed and sleep for hours? I feel that way about life. There are people out there who read books about vampires and they crave immortality, but sometimes I’m so thankful that at the end of it all, we get to sleep forever. No more pain. No more exhaustion. Death is the reward for having lived.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“Well, it is a crypt. In the philosophical sense. All old buildings become crypts the moment they’re finished. A shrine to a time that’s already dead.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“I can’t put into words what it is to love someone like that. Or lose someone like that. Which is part of the reason why I don’t write anymore. Because words fail. A lot of people they don’t know what they’ve got until it’s gone, but I knew. I knew. I knew every day that we were together that what we had was extraordinary. And I was so afraid, every day, that I would lose him, lose them all. I used to worry so much about his safety, worry that they’d finally get sick of dealing with my messed-up family, but they never did. And I used to question how two people could be so lucky. How could the universe justify bringing us together when we were only nine? How could it ever be fair that what everyone was looking for was handed to us on a silver platter when we were too young to even know that we wanted it?”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“When I look up into the night sky, I remember that I’m nothing but the ashes of long-dead stars. A human being is a collection of atoms that comes together into an ordered pattern for a brief period of time and then falls apart again. I find comfort in my smallness.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“It was you who taught me that oblivion is our reward for being human, that the very fabric of reality itself is kind enough to ensure that all our sins and silliness will be stripped away.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“Death is the reward for having lived.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“I kinda like the idea” she said, “That when we die, despite any pain or fear or embarrassment we experience during our lives, despite any heartbreak or grief, we get to be dispersed back into nothingness. It makes me feel brave, knowing that I’ll get a blank slate at the end. You get a brief glimmer of consciousness… I can appreciate that that’s redemption, on the grandest scale. Oblivion isn’t scary; it’s the closest thing to genuine absolution of sin that I can imagine.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“Space is the best cure for sadness that I know.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
Our Chemical Hearts Quotes About Redemption and Moving On
As well as battling mental health issues, the characters share their reflections about life, moving on and learning to overcome challenges. Here are some quotes on redemption and moving on from Our Chemical Hearts…
“People are perfect when all that’s left of them is memory.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“I can’t lie to you and tell you that standing in front of someone and offering them your soul and having them reject you is not gonna be one of the worst things that ever happens to you. You will wonder for days or weeks or months or years afterward what it is about you that was so wrong or broken or ugly that they couldn’t love you the way you loved them. You will look for all the reasons inside yourself that they didn’t want you and you will find a million.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“Maybe it was the way you looked in the mornings when you first woke up and hadn’t showered. Maybe it was the way you were too available, because despite what everyone says, playing hard to get is still attractive. Some days you will believe that every atom of your being is defective somehow. What you need to remember, as I remembered as I watched Grace Town leave, is that you are extraordinary.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“We were characters out of a movie. We were thoroughly alive. And we were absolutely beautiful.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“Some things are more beautiful when they’ve been broken.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“Grace had torn me apart and put me back together so many times that I’d started to believe that was what I wanted. A kintsukuroi relationship, more beautiful for having been broken. But something can only be shattered so many times before it becomes irreparable…”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“The best thing the universe ever gave us is that we’ll all be forgotten.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“I know you want her back, kid. And I know that people saying things like ‘there are plenty more fish in the sea’ is only going to make you hurt more. And I could tell you all about the science of what your brain is going through right now. How it’s processing a pain as intense as hitting a nerve in your tooth, but it can’t find a source for that pain, so you kind of feel it everywhere. I could tell you that when you fall for someone, the bits of your brain that light up are the same as when you’re hungry or thirsty. And I could tell you that when the person you love leaves you, you starve for them, you crave them, Heartbreak is a science, like love. So trust me when I say this: you’re wounded right now, but you’ll heal.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“Stories with happy endings are stories that haven’t been finished yet.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“Even the very best people found ways to hurt the ones they loved.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“Something can only be shattered so many times before it becomes irreparable, just as a piece of paper can only be folded so many times before it cannot be folded any more.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“The greatest love story ever told doesn’t have to be about two people who spent their whole lives together. It might be about a love that lasted two weeks or two months or two years, but burned brighter and hotter and more brilliantly than any other love before or after. Don’t mourn a failed love; there’s no such thing. All love is equal in the brain.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
Funny Our Chemical Hearts Quotes
If you’re looking for some lighthearted quotes, then you’ll like these funny quotes from Our Chemical Hearts.
“We must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy, Grace. Reading Harry Potter is what is right.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“Some people are born with an ear for music, some people are born with a talent for drawing, some people…have a built-in radar that tells them where a comma needs to go in a sentence.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“Tell me you believe that our lives are anything more than a ridiculous cascade of random chances.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“Plus, how can she be your soul mate? Didn’t you tell me she’d never read Harry Potter? Do you really want to spend the rest of your life with someone like that? I mean, for God’s sake, think of your children. What kind of environment would they be growing up in with such a mother?”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“Maybe Dracula wasn’t a vampire, just a raging alcoholic who was constantly hungover.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“If people really were assembled from pieces of the universe, her soul was made of stardust and chaos.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“Bedrooms are like crime scenes. So many clues to be uncovered.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“Human beings could not be mended with gold seams.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“That’s what getting to know someone is about. Judging them.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“Because you’re worth nothing less than stardust, but all I can give you is dirt.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“She’s cute. In a weird, Janis Joplin, will probably die at twenty-seven kind of way.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“Your son is a miscreant.”
Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
“And that’s why we allow him to hang out with you lot. Because you use words like miscreant in general conversation,” Sonya said, mussing my hair and pouring me a glass of orange juice.”
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Final Word on Our Chemical Hearts Book Quotes
Those are my favourite book quotes from Our Chemical Hearts, from the witty and hilarious to the enlightening and moving.
Whether you’re looking for quotes on love, overcoming challenges or to make an insightful book caption for Instagram, we hope that these words by Krystal Sutherland have inspired and soothed you.
Did I miss any of your favourite quotes from Our Chemical Hearts? Let me know in the comments.
