I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.

The line is best known from the film adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (2008), whose screenplay was written by Eric Roth. In the movie, the sentiment is delivered as part of a reflective voiceover framed as a letter, expressing a wish that the listener live authentically and, if dissatisfied, find the courage to reinvent their life. The quote circulates widely online under Roth’s name because he scripted the film, though it is spoken by a character within the film rather than presented as Roth’s personal aphorism.

The speaker offers a two-part blessing: first, that one’s life align with one’s deepest values (“a life you’re proud of”); second, that if it doesn’t, reinvention remains possible. The quote rejects fatalism and treats identity as something continually authored rather than fixed by past choices. Its emotional force comes from pairing an aspirational standard with compassion for failure: pride is not demanded, but the courage to begin again is. In the film’s context, it resonates as an antidote to regret—an insistence that meaning can be reclaimed even late, after loss, or under circumstances beyond one’s control.