I hated motorcycles. I said to my mother, 'I'll never get a motorcycle.' And she said, 'You never know what you'll want when you are older.' After that, the thing that scared me was not so much the motorcycle itself, but that I could turn into a person who would want one. I was scared of the idea that I could become an entirely different person, a stranger to myself.

I always interpret coincidences as little clues to our destiny

Luck never gives; it lends.

How many times could you give up on someone you loved?

Love didn't necessarily look the way you expected it to.

Carmen hated the 'life is too short" rationalization. She thought it was one of the lamer excuses in the history of excuse-making. Whenever you did something because "life is too short not to," you could be sure life would be just long enough to punish you for it.

She wondered if maybe tragedy was what it took to make your heart capable of admitting a new member.