Top 100 Heartbreak Quotes of All Time

A short, finished list rather than an endless feed: 100 of the best heartbreak quotes ever written, picked out of the full heartbreak archive on QuoteForever. You will find Tristan Wilds, Lykke Li, Timothee Chalamet and Anoushka Shankar among them.

Read the list top to bottom, or use it as a starting point - every author name links to everything else they said, and every quote has its own page you can share or turn into an image.

1

What love we've given, we'll have forever. What love we fail to give, will be lost for all eternity.

2

Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.

Hearts are not had as a gift, But hearts are earned. - William Butler Yeats 3

Hearts are not had as a gift, But hearts are earned.

4

I write about heartbreak because I like writing about sad things, but I'm writing happy songs, too!

5

I think sports makes for good drama because it has all the same ingredients as anything worth reading or listening to or watching. Conflict, desire, heartbreak - it's all there.

6

There's no glory in climbing a mountain if all you want to do is to get to the top. It's experiencing the climb itself - in all its moments of revelation, heartbreak, and fatigue - that has to be the goal.

7

There's a variety and depth to the song topics I get to write about in children's music and books: being able to write about things I wouldn't normally write about, like a disappointing pancake, or monsters or opposite day is really different than writing about heartbreak and relationships.

8

If they're singing about heartbreak, they've lived it.

9

I always prefer to write songs about emotional situations and heartbreak because I like getting into the character.

10

I definitely shut down sometimes. I always just go into my own little cocoon and write, and I surround myself with as much music as possible. The last girlfriend I had, when we broke up, I remember being in a room for days on days on days with my music cranked up, playing songs like Kanye's '808's & Heartbreak.' That playlist just was long!

11

Well, I write a lot of poetry - that's where it usually all starts. I definitely want to show you guys sides of me - love, loss, heartbreak - all of that good stuff!

12

As much as heartbreak music might be therapeutic, we all want love and long for that feeling. So if a song can give you that feeling, even without being in love, that's amazing.

13

A song is about heartbreak - but what are the constituent feelings? What are the aspects? There is anger, there is guilt, there are all these different things. I guess putting those voices into dialogue together just felt real.

14

I have sadness in me. I have anger in me. I have heartbreak in me.

15

When Radar goes home, Peg and Erin go down to meet him. Erin sees Radar in uniform and calls him Daddy. It so incredibly perfectly captured the heartbreak of being away from your child who was growing up without you.

16

For the most part, that message hasn't changed a lot over the years - love is still love, and heartbreak is still heartbreak.

17

A lot of the songs are based on my previous relationship. It didn't work out. I lost him, and it ruined me. I had to learn to get back on my feet. I used that heartbreak to create something really beautiful.

18

I've been training myself and listening to other artists and seeing where their emotion comes from, singing a heartbreak song when they're in a happy relationship.

19

The problem is, when I talk about heartbreak or whatever, people want to melt it down to some break-up of a relationship, but it's not about that. If you're a sensitive person, just stepping outside can be heartbreaking.

20

I'm really good at making teen angst romantic. I'm really good at dealing with heartbreak and things like that and making it into this whole experience. But there's no way to make someone-on-the-Internet-said-something-mean-about-me into romantic angst where you can listen to music and cry or whatever.

21

Most people in the Western world grow up with the received wisdom that Mozart was a genius. But few people necessarily know why. More than anyone else, he captured this something which is the human condition, the fine line that we all constantly dance between joy and pain, between absolute happiness and absolute heartbreak.

22

My aim is for every song to have a purpose - for you to be able to say, 'This song is about this.' But love and heartbreak are some of the most abstract subjects.

23

I actually don't pay a lot of attention to the movie 'industry'... I just do the work when I get it. I never considered anything I was in, or did, as a possible breakthrough for me. I have advised other actors not to expect anything. Expecting a 'breakthrough' is almost an automatic for sure 'let down' or heartbreak.

24

Heartbreak has definitely been a big inspiration for me. You can write about a bad situation and just feel so much better afterwards. For me it's very therapeutic. But love in general - even when it's good - is always very inspiring.

25

It's only through aging and going through heartbreak and loss and successes and failures that you can look back and look at the mistakes some young people make.

26

My first heartbreak was extreme. I went to Australia for 10 months when I was at school and told the girl I was madly in love with not to come out to see me - and of course, when I came back, she met me at the airport to tell me she'd met someone else.

27

We can appear to be tough as nails, but guys have a level of insecurity and vulnerability that's exponentially bigger than you think. With the primal urge to be alpha comes extreme heartbreak. The harder we fight, the harder we fall.

28

We recognise that, like us, other humans have insecurities and ambitions; we fall in love and have relationships that end in heartbreak; we worry about our children's wellbeing; we say things we regret; we're occasionally kept awake by fears or worries; and we try to impress people we look up to.

29

I think the heartbreak of September 11 - America's grief not only over the loss of life but also the loss of our own innocence - has expanded us as people because it has tenderized our hearts. On a psychological level, the American people have matured as a result of that awful day.

30

I don't bad-mouth football, but I also know that it has a long trail of tears and heartbreak and animosity built up by past players who feel that they put so much into the game and didn't get a lot out of it after.

31

I got a third-degree ankle sprain practicing long jump. I never fully recovered. That was my first heartbreak. I thought track was going to be something that was going to happen in my life. It never went in the direction I wanted it to, no matter how hard I tried.

32

'Broken' is a story of two broken people coming together. I think every one of us can associate with it, as we all have faced a heartbreak sometime in our life.

33

The loss of my mom really inspired me to go to a place with my performances that were emotionally honest, and I found that audiences really responded to that. People need to see heartbreak transformed into beauty.

34

Choosing to remain vulnerable and sensitive despite disappointments or heartbreak helps me stay authentic to my life. It is the hardest part.

35

I've been in two long-term relationships and - this sounds awful - they were really helpful for writing heartbreak. It makes good songs.

36

Heartbreak is hard, but you find more and more things to be grateful for every day.

37

I have this sense of independent heartbreak, of annulling romances before they get their feet off the ground.

38

A teenage foot that never tapped to 'Heartbreak Hotel' in the '50s probably belonged to a hopeless grind.

39

The three touchstones that woke Buddha up - sickness, old age, and death - are a pretty good place to start when crafting a tragic tale. And if we need to get more specific: heartbreak, destruction, miscomprehension, natural disasters, betrayal, and the waste of human potential.

40

I'm a big fan of Elvis, man. I got 'Heartbreak Hotel' tattooed on my chest.

41

The Dream didn't need to struggle. He's homegrown talent, straight from the WWE Performance Center, trained by the best coaches in the world: Norman Smiley, who's known from coast-to-coast, Matt Bloom, head trainer, and I am protege of the one-and-only The Heartbreak Kid Shawn Michaels.

42

Rhythm and blues is about what life is, it's about being able to talk heartbreak and understanding that people go through it, not about this fantasy in how much you're spending.

43

Particularly in these high school-set movies, there's something about being in high school that's like a cauldron, a boiling pot of emotion and joy and heartbreak that you feel so intensely. Because you don't have any awareness yet, you don't realize that it's a finite time and feeling.

44

People always ask me, 'Why do you only write about heartbreak?' I think I only write when I'm broken, so that's just what happens. It makes me feel better, but having some distance helps.

45

I was always interested in listening to music - and, of course, when my older brother brought home 'Heartbreak Hotel,' that was it.

46

You can't fast-forward heartbreak, and you can't rewind love - and that's just one big bummer.

47

I eye 'Modern Love' warily between that second and third cup of coffee on Sunday mornings, calculating how much of a push I need to get through the day's unhurriedly earnest saga of heartbreak and recovery.

48

My first mixtape especially - that came from a heartbreak.

49

One day I am at home, watching dramatic images of Iraqi Yazidis fleeing for their lives being aired nonstop on 24-hour news channels. Days later, I am there, staring at tens of thousands of displaced Iraqis and feeling a 35-millimeter frame cannot capture the scope of devastation and heartbreak before me.

50

Even your favorite celebrities go through tough periods and have heartbreak. They must empower themselves with healthy choices, as do you!

51

I was doing this really wacky sketch comedy but at the same time writing these dark, cerebral plays about characters coming to grips with their loneliness and heartbreak. My dream job has always been a way to combine the two. I would say 'BoJack Horseman' is the culmination of all of that.

52

Channel your heartbreak into work, then use that extra money to treat yourself to a new handbag.

53

Everybody writes about love and cheating and heartbreak. We've done all that.

54

I started writing songs at eight. Heartbreak songs - don't ask me why. It was the stuff I used to hear, so I imitated it. I used to write songs about guys cheating. Could you imagine!

55

I think my biggest heartbreak was when I just couldn't get an American cheese cake/pie with a saltine cracker crust and green tomato sorbet to work out in my favor.

56

I wish I wrote 'Don't Speak' by No Doubt. I mean, that is a classic heartbreak song; it gets me every time.

57

I have experienced heartbreak but not in a classical sense.

58

I skipped 'College Dropout' and 'Late Registration' and went straight to '808s & Heartbreak.'

59

Romance is one of the things that most countries share, and I've noticed how different communities have their own ways of singing about love and heartbreak.

60

Awkward conversations are painful, but they're way easier than divorce, resentment, and heartbreak.

61

Reading cookbooks will help with just about anything in your life, including heartbreak.

62

My thinking was scrambled when Sullivan and I separated. Something happened to me that had never happend before. I couldn't cope. It was heartbreak time. I thought it was the end of the world.

63

I've been through heartbreak and uncertainty and giddy crushes and everything. We all have.

64

When you have heartbreak, what's important is that you don't go halfway. Go all the way down. Don't take pills that keep you in limbo. Cry out all the feelings. Then your own energy for life will put you up again. You become stronger.

65

Food is not a means toward resolution. It can't cure heartbreak or solve untenable dilemmas.

66

My biggest heartbreak was on Dancing With the Stars,' not winning with Zendaya, honestly.

67

Good friends are often our lifelines. Mine have seen me through heartbreak, through the deaths of loved ones, and through that phase in college when I was obsessed with denim jumpsuits and matching fingerless gloves.

68

On 'Love Letters' I focused exclusively on sung music, creating a collection of songs that directly address heartbreak and its ensuing emotions in a way that instrumental music can only hint at.

69

On 'Love Letters', I focused exclusively on songs with lyrics, creating a collection of songs that directly address heartbreak and its ensuing emotions in a way that instrumental music can only hint at.

70

I'm certainly not the only person to have gone through a divorce. I'm not the only person who's had heartbreak.

71

I always wanted to do things on my own terms, and unfortunately in this industry, that's not something that is easily given. You're at the mercy of other people, but then you still have that drive to continue on. That's an equation for a lot of heartbreak.

72

I have lots of hard-earned knowledge about women through heartbreak - and social faux pas. When I was about 15, thinking I was engaging in light conversation, I asked a woman when she was due. Of course, she wasn't pregnant. I learnt the lesson never to ask again.

73

Everybody reading the same book at the same time pulls people together. It does start a conversation. If you're going to read 'The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane,' you're going to talk about heartbreak and loss and all of those things that people don't talk about as a community.

74

As a boy and even now, I am wont to melancholy. I do, probably once a day, experience a sincere heartbreak.

75

When you go through heartbreak, you just do the things that get you by. Eventually, you realise it's about making the most of life.

76

Whenever I deal with heartbreak, my therapy is to listen to all the love songs I can to purge my system - and I change my phone number so I won't be tempted to call or keep expecting him to call back.

77

'Heartbreak House' was a lot of fun for me. I must have missed that day at school. I'd never read it or seen it. It's one of those things that a lot of people are familiar with.

78

I wasn't in any super duper serious relationships growing up, but yeah, I know what that heartbreak feels like.

79

If I look back on my life, you can almost tell the story of it through pop songs. Romances as a teenager, your first kiss, first love, first heartbreak.

80

I think heartbreak is something that you learn to live with as opposed to learn to forget.

81

You need to experience life to be able to write about friendships, relationships, and heartbreak.

82

I think everything in life comes in threes: heartbreak and all that. You've got to do the full round in order to learn.

83

I'll probably continue to write about heartbreak forever. That stuff doesn't go away as you get older.

84

Especially with grief and heartbreak, you can go through these things and think, 'I will never be whole again.'

85

As a young woman, I experienced high school and heartbreak, and the music I started to write was a little bit more poetic, and more inspired by spoken word. The real raw emotional things that sit in the back of our minds, that you were afraid to say? That's how I started to write my music. And that's how 'H.E.R. Volume One' came about.

86

When you're in the middle of it, when you're a kid growing up, you don't think, 'This is my first heartbreak.' You just think, 'My heart is broken.' But then as a parent, you look back, and you see your child go through his or her first heartbreak, and you're realizing, 'Oh my God, this is her first heartbreak.'

87

I've DP'd so many films for first-time directors, and I know the trauma, the heartbreak, the vulnerability, how much you have to believe in the story.

88

I've become a voice for young women who are growing up and uncomfortable being vulnerable, uncomfortable with changes, heartbreak - and becoming jaded.

89

I would say that my music is surreal, it's inspired by dreams, and it's inspired by heartbreak.

90

Just because I'm a girl and it's pop doesn't mean I have to write about love and heartbreak.

91

Loss and heartbreak are pretty universal.

92

I've been in this business for a long while, but it's not like I've been waiting tables. Since I started writing, I've only worked on things that I love. I've had a lot of heartbreak, but you don't become an artist and not expect that.

93

A lot of people think teenagers haven't gone through anything in their lives - they're not even 20 years old yet. But a twenty-something can go through the same type of experience or heartbreak that a 50-year-old can go through, so why does age matter?

94

In this industry, you're so used to heartbreak because nine out of 10 times, you don't get what you want. But, that one out of 10 times, you do and it's just the best feeling in the world.

95

I think anything that's creative really takes my mind off whatever it is that I'm going through in my life. If you're going through heartbreak, and you can write a song, it's a wonderful win-win, because it takes your mind off the heartbreak, and you get to vent.

96

I find the trick to playing a villain is that you can't be bad for the sake of being bad. It has to be rooted in some sort of heartbreak.

97

A song like 'Heartbreaker,' it's a song about learning - it's not necessarily a song about heartbreak. It's more than that. We write those songs to relive how we got over something.

98

If I helped you through something or if I helped you find love or if I helped you find a way through heartbreak or whatever it is, then my job is done, and that's what I want to leave behind in this world.

99

I want people to know that I'm not just 'Chillin' It.' I'm a real person. There's heartbreak and trials, and I hope I put that in my music.

100

My music comes from heartbreak - from feeling what it's like to lose everything and not being able to express it through words because it doesn't make sense.

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