Sometimes I’ve even wished there was a human pause button, where you could choose some point in your life where you could stay always.

When you raise an animal, you live it like your own child.

The world was large, so large. Bigger than it had been before. Family, too, a bigger word. That felt like a good thing. An essential thing. There was power in numbers.

You look so good," I say, and s***! Oh god, that's not what I meant. S***! "It looks good. The book.

In the two months I had also dated Justin Fellowes, this guy in my Spanish class, though after three weeks we decided we should "see other people," which in my case was a joke, but it beat hearing him remark on everything I ate. 'I don't know why girls are always on a diet,' he'd say when I ordered a Diet Coke, and 'You should watch your starch intake' when I had a muffin.

I had always had a little problem looking out for myself in love. I was afraid people would leave me. So I sort of clung and did everything possible to keep someone around. I didn't have a hard talk with myself about who I was keeping around. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out. I clung to people like human life preservers. I thought i'd die if someone left me. Its ironic because now I'm the one who's leaving.

Fear was the biggest bullshitter, he’d said. But sometimes, too, fear told the truth.