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

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.

Sometimes you couldn’t face the sadness of being forgotten until you felt the comfort of being remembered again.

But I know this. We're ready to move forward again in our way. Together or apart, no matter how far apart, we live in one another. We go on together.

I'm not going anywhere without you. We're swimming to China together. And if the worst happens, I'm dying with you before I'm living without you.

Different people were good at different things, Lena mused. Lena was good at writing thank-you notes, for instance, and Effie was good at being happy.

There were those emotions down there, and though she couldn't quite feel them, they were strong and she feared them. It was like watching a thunderhead from high up in a plane, and though you weren't under it, you knew how it would feel if you were. You knew you'd have to land eventually.