The frightened walk away when love is difficult. I know that now. You have to be willing to give everything away. You have to be willing to end up with nothing. Only then will your heart be whole.

In the darkest hour of winter, when the starlings had all flown away, Gretel Samuelson fell in love. It happened the way things are never supposed to happen in real life, like a sledgehammer, like a bolt from out of the blue. One minute she was a seventeen year-old senior in high school waiting for a Sicilian pizza to go; the next one she was someone whose whole world had exploded, leaving her adrift in the Milky Way, so far from earth she was walking on stars.

Others said May was best, that sweet green time when lilacs bloomed and gardens along Main Street were filled with sugary pink peonies and Dutch tulips.

It was the sort of beauty you feel so deeply it becomes contagious and somehow makes you feel beautiful too.

Crying wasn't like riding a bike. Give it up, and you quickly forget how it's done.

Here is the riddle of love: Everything it gives to you, it takes away.

I never even believed in happiness. I didn't think it existed. Now look at me. I'm ready to believe in just about anything.