My father said that love at first sight should send you running, if you know what's good for you. It's your dark pieces having instant recognition with their dark pieces, he says. You're an idiot if you think it means you've met your soul mate. So I was an idiot.

I began to learn the importance of lifting things up and looking underneath.

If fate is a shape-shifter, then loves is too. It can be, anyway, in its most dangerous form. It´s your best day and then your worst. It´s your most hope and then you most despair. Lightness, darkness, it can swing between extremes at lightning speed- a boat upon the water on the most dangerous day, and then the clouds crawl in and the sky turns black and the sea rages and the boat is lost.

To an untrained eye, need and love were as easily mistaken for each other as the real master's painting and a forgery.

She'd be one of those parents who left a kid behind at a rest stop, driving for miles before she noticed. We'd hear about her on the evening news.

The most basic and somehow forgettable thing is this: Love is not pain. Love is goodness. And real love--it's less shiny than solid and simple.

Sometimes good choices are really bad ones, wrapped up in so much fear you can't even see straight.