exemplar, n. It's always something we have to negotiate- the face that my parents are happy, and yours have never been. I have something to live up to, and if I fail, I still have a family to welcome me home. You have a storyline to rewrite, and a lack of faith that it can ever be done. You love my parents, I know. But you never get too close. You never truly believe there aren't bad secrets underneath.

If smart people are parodying it, that's a sure sign that some less smart people are believing it.

It was the most amazing feeling in the world. to know that something right happened, and to know that it had happened not through luck or command but simply because it was right.

I love you,” she says. “I love you,” I say. And then we hang up, because nothing else needs to be said after that. I want to give Zara her life back. Even if I feel I deserve something like this, I don’t deserve it at her expense.

We pencil-sketch our previous life so we can contrast it to the technicolor of the moment.

You went and broke our lives. You are so much worse than a cheater. You killed something. And you killed it when its back was turned.

To love--to fall--is not a question. To touch--to kiss--to speak--those are questions.