But then she hadn’t just learned to love this summer – she had also learned how to need.

Maybe, sometimes, it's easier to be mad at the people you trust because you know they'll always love you, no matter what.

Carmen didn't like change, and she certainly didn't like endings.

I told him, though, that he better be good to you. When you came along, I said I'd share you, but I told him to remember that you're my sister. I loved you first.

He was the strangest of strangers in that he was also her oldest friend.

The most haunting thing was not that he didn't love her anymore. She could have accepted that eventually. The most haunting thing was that he did. He loved her from afar. He loved her in a way that was preserved in time, that couldn't be sullied. And she tended it in her careful, curatorial way.

I dont really write with the idea of trying to teach any lessons. I want to tell a story as truthfully and engagingly as I can, and then let the chips fall where they may.