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

Love is like war; easy to begin, hard to end.

But certain souls cohere. It's rare but possible. But it takes two powerful wills to make it so.

Lena was an introvert. She knew she had trouble connecting with people. She always felt like her looks were fake bait, seeming to offer a bridge to people, which she couldn't easily cross.

So far, she’d been her usual lame self: solitary and routine-loving, carefully avoiding any path that might lead to spontaneous human interaction. Lena Kaligaris

It was wrong. But it was worth it.

It was their mothers, long ago. Tibby noted with joy that all four of them were wearing jeans.