I did love her. I've loved her from the first time I saw her.

I allowed myself to suffer how jarringly destructive the present feels and how fragile the past.

All the things she planned to feel, the way she planned to look and seem, the appropriate things she planned to say. None of them came to pass.

The problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem. Got that? -Coach Brevin

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

Besides being asked why I write about young characters, I am often asked how I write about young characters. How do I throw myself across the chasm of full adulthood to relive that period? I guess I don’t, really. Age is not so much a feature of your character, as the spot where you stand for a pretty fleeting time on the arc of your life.

He'd pushed her. He'd scared her. He'd besieged her. He'd vowed he wouldn't, and he did.