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

...forever is hard enough without it beginning now.

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.

The most true-love words are not the ones that grasp and hold and bind you, twisting you both up together in some black dance. No, they are ones that leave you free to stand alone on your own solid ground, leave him to do the same, a tender space between you.

We should not give away a moment to anyone who does not deserve it.

Stories took twists and turns down fairy-tale paths or down very human everyday ones. You think you’re at the end of the book, and it’s only the end of a chapter.

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