She knew whose love she doubted. It wasn't her parents' and it wasn't her friends: It was her own.

For some reason our lives were marked by summers. . . . Summer was the time when our lives joined completely, when we all had our birthdays, when really important things happened

Lena knew she had spent too much of her life in a state of passive dread, just waiting for something bad to happen. In a life like that, relief was as close as you got to happiness.

I sometimes think the stronger you feel about someone, the harder it is to picture their face when you are away from them.

Grief was like a newborn, and the first three months were hard as hell, but by six months you'd recognized defeat, shifted your life around, and made room for it.

It's so much easier to have no expectations than to have big ones.

You know what the secret is? It's so simple. We love one another. We're nice to one another. Do you know how rare that is? - Carmen