Fiction

30 of the Best Quotes from DAISY JONES & THE SIX

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Claire Handscombe

Staff Writer

Claire Handscombe moved from Europe to DC in 2012, ostensibly to study for an MFA in Creative Writing, but actually – let’s be honest – because of an obsession with The West Wing. She is the author of Unscripted, a novel about a young woman with a celebrity crush and a determined plan, and the editor of Walk With Us: How The West Wing Changed Our Lives. She also hosts the Brit Lit Podcast, a fortnightly show of news and views from British books and publishing. Blog: the Brit Lit Blog. Twitter: @BookishClaire

I’ve loved Taylor Jenkins Reid’s books since her very first one, Forever, Interrupted, which I discovered almost by accident. I was a little scared of Daisy Jones and the Six, because it seems like everyone loves it so much, and I’ve been burned before by what I call bandwagon books. But on this one, it turns out, the hype is entirely deserved. It’s such a good story, told so expertly, and the “oral history” format works really well. I loved it, and blew through it. I know a book is good when whatever else is going on in life, I *have* to make time to read it for hours at a time.

If, like me, you’re still looking for some books to fill the Daisy Jones shaped hole in your reading life, you might want to take a look at this list.

Below are some of what I think are the best quotes from Daisy Jones and the Six—the ones that hopefully don’t spoil the story,  but do illustrate how insightful the book is about love, friendship, and music. It really is an extraordinary novel.

 

However, it should also be noted that, on matters both big and small, sometimes accounts of the same event differ.

The truth often lies, unclaimed, in the middle.

—Author’s note

 

I had absolutely no interest in being somebody else’s muse.

I am not a muse.

I am the somebody.

—Daisy

 

Men often think they deserve a sticker for treating women like people.

—Karen

 

That’s the glory of being a man. An ugly face isn’t the end of you.

—Karen

 

LA is full of men just waiting for some naive girl to believe their bullshit.

—Daisy

 

Let me put it this way: I’ve seen a lot of marriages where everyone is faithful and nobody is happy.

—Camila

 

It was a big lesson for me when I was young—being given things versus earning them. I was so used to being given things that I didn’t know how important it is for your soul to earn them.

—Daisy

 

That’s the one thing they don’t mention when they tell you to stay away from drugs. They don’t say, “Drugs will have you sleeping with some real jerks.” But they should. 

—Daisy

 

Music can dig, you know? It can take a shovel to your chest and just start digging until it hits something. 

—Eddie

 

In general, when you have drugs to spare and a nice cottage to do them in, you’re probably not attracting people that care about you.

—Daisy

 

Actually, it wasn’t that fun, it was just that I was happy. Everything seems fun when you’re happy. 

—Graham

 

The Chosen Ones never know they are chosen. They think everyone gets a gold carpet rolled out for them. 

—Rod

 

When you have everything, someone else getting a little something feels like they’re stealing from you. 

—Graham

 

It’s not drugs that make you look old, it’s sobering up. 

—Daisy

 

I used to care when men called me difficult. I really did. Then I stopped. This way is better. 

—Daisy

 

I don’t believe in soul mates anymore, and I’m not looking for anything. But if I did believe in them, I’d believe your soul mate was somebody who had all the things you didn’t, that needed all the things you had. Not somebody who’s suffering from the same stuff you are. 

—Karen

 

That’s the problem with people who don’t have to work for things. They don’t know how to work for things.

—Billy

 

You don’t think to tell someone they will be a good aunt if you think they will be a good mom. 

—Daisy

 

It’s so strange, how someone’s silence, someone’s insistence that something isn’t happening can be so suffocating. But it can be. And suffocating is exactly the word, too. You feel like you can’t breathe. 

—Daisy

 

She had written something that felt like I could have written it, except that I knew I couldn’t have. I wouldn’t have come up with something like that. Which is what we all want from art, isn’t it? When someone pins down something that feels like it lives inside us? Take a piece of your heart out and shows it to you? 

—Billy

 

But loving somebody isn’t perfection and good times and laughing and making love. Love is forgiveness and patience and faith and every once in a while, it’s a gut punch. That’s why it’s a dangerous thing, when you go loving the wrong person. When you love somebody who doesn’t deserve it. You have to be with someone that deserves your faith and you have to be deserving of someone else’s. It’s sacred. 

—Billy

 

Do you know what you do with that level of trust? When someone says, “I trust you so much I can tolerate you having secrets”?

—Billy

 

But music is never about music. It if was, we’d be writing songs about guitars. But we don’t. We write songs about women. 

—Graham

 

I swear, I think about that day sometimes when I’m feeling low. I think about it to remind myself you never know what kind of crazy good shit is around the corner. But it’s hard not to remember, when I think about that day, that lots of crazy bad shit is often around the corner, too. 

—Graham

 

People like it when you make them sad, I think. But people hate it when you leave them sad. Great albums have to be roller coasters that end on top. You gotta leave people will a little bit of hope.

—Billy

 

Acceptance is a powerful drug. And I should know because I’ve done them all. 

—Daisy

 

Handsome men that tell you what you want to hear are almost always liars. 

—Daisy

 

I wish someone had told me that love isn’t torture. Because I thought love was this thing that was supposed to tear you in two and leave you heartbroken and make your heart race in the worst way. I thought love was bombs and tears and blood. I did not know that it was supposed to make you lighter, not heavier. I didn’t know it was supposed to take only the kind of work that makes you softer. 

—Daisy

 

You can’t control another person. It doesn’t matter how much you love them. You can’t love someone back to health and you can’t hate them back to health and no matter how right you are about something, it doesn’t mean they will change their mind. 

—Simone

 

All I will say is that you show up for your friends on their hardest days. And you hold their hand through the roughest parts. Life is about who is holding your hand and, I think, whose hand you commit to holding. 

—Camila