The way two people can end up in the same place, find each other in a crowd, and change their lives and the lives of the people around them forever... It makes you believe in fate. And fate gives love some authority. Like it's been stamped with approval from above, if you believe in above. A godly green light. Some destined significance.

We hurt each other, is the point. Hurt, annoy, embarrass, but move on. People, it just doesn't work that way. Your own feelings get so complicated that you forget the ways another human being can be vulnerable. You spend a lot of energy protecting yourself. All those layers and motivations and feelings. You get hurt, you stay hurt sometimes. The hurt affects your ability to go forward. And words. All the words between us. Words can be permanent. Certain ones are impossible to forgive.

I'd always thought telling the truth to other people was hard, but maybe that was a snap compared to telling the truth to yourself. Sometimes we just refused to know what we knew.

You can forget that other people carry pieces of your own story around in their heads. I've always thought--put together all those random pieces form everyone who's ever known you from your parents to the guy who once sat next to you on a bus, and you'd probably see a fuller version of your life than you even did while living it.

In the middle of the night I am awakened by a sound. I sit up abruptly in bed. I hear it again. It's music. Wait, it sounds like the ice cream man, in our house. Is this some kind of twisted nightmare? The flipping ice cream man, breaking in to chop us all up in our beds to the tune of 'Zippity Do Dah'?... My heart slows. I remember. There is no psycho ice cream man here. It is just our new musical soap dispenser.

Marriage is like a well-built porch. If one of the two posts leans too much, the porch collapses. So each must be strong enough to stand on its own.

They never told you that stranger might be someone you knew.