Maybe the truth is, there's a little bit of loser in all of us. Being happy isn't having everything in your life be perfect. Maybe it's about stringing together all the little things.

We aren't in high school. We aren't really in our families and we aren't in our houses. Those are the places we grew up and the times we spent together, but they aren't us. If think they are, then we're lost, because times end and places are lost. We aren't any place or any time . . . We are everywhere.

The ocean was the best place, of course. That was what she loved most. It was a feeling of freedom like no other, and yet a feeling of communion with all the other places and creatures the water touched.

Please believe him. Keep your heart open to him. He can make you happy. He has always loved you, and you once loved him with all your heart.

People sometimes talk about the power of first impressions, and believe me, there is truth to it.

She liked the life she had. She loved habits. She craved a day with nothing in it, a long, quiet stretch of hours in the studio.

For the first time she saw that the nurse's name was Tabitha.