I don’t know why we insist on pain when pain is so often easy to eliminate. It’s funny the ways we try to punish ourselves when we feel we’ve committed some crime.

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

Hundreds,' Joe says. 'Hundreds and hundreds. But then again, I'm old.' So old, Jesus was in your math class,' I say. I crack myself up.

Sometimes maybe you should let someone you love travel great distances away from you. You shouldn’t think you needed to set out to retrieve them and put them back where they belonged. Sometimes they were only safe and happy, like Annabelle Aurora. And then other times, it was just possible they were lost at sea. It would be your duty, then, to get out into the boat and search, even if the waves were choppy and the wind was howling the protests of the dead.

I know parental embarrassment usually stops somewhere at fifteen, but he just kept on giving me good reasons.

... But then again, a person could turn ugly. Their actual look could change when their actions were repulsive.

A relationship could be a place to hide too.