So I put up with bad behavior in the name of loving the way I thought you were supposed to love.

Stereotypes are fast and easy, but they are lies, and the truth takes its time.

Yeah. When you want what's real and you try to find that in high school, you might as well be looking for a mossy rock beside a babbling brook on the corner of Sixth and Pine in downtown Seattle.

Have you worked here long?" Sebastian asks. Just a few months," I say. "Do you come here a lot?" As if you don't know, Jade. I used to come every day, or, you know, when I could, I'd bring Bo after work. Or just myself." At night sometimes. You'd climb the fence. You'd watch the stars. You'd tilt back your head and look at the sky. You'd think it over, whatever it was.

I became a writer because I love books, and I believe in their power.

It can be exhausting eating a meal cooked by a man. With a woman, it's, Ho hum, pass the beans. A guy, you have to act like he just built the Taj Mahal.

It's good to let God pick a man for you. We don't do so well when we pick them ourselves. They end up lipsticks in a drawer, all those wrong colors you thought looked so good in the package.