What if we could stop being different colors, different backgrounds, and just be in love?

I say, thirteen is too many dogs for good mental health. Five is pretty much the limit. More than five dogs and you forfeit your right to call yourself entirely sane. Even if the dogs are small.

I looked at her. my lovely, tall mother with her pretty coil of hair and her hard, bitter mouth. Her veins were never open. Her heart never leapt out to flop helplessly on the lawn. She never melted into puddles. She was normal. Always. At any cost.

Secrets are more powerful when people know you've got them," said Mr. Sutton. "You show them the tiniest edge of your secret, but the rest you keep under wraps.

Meghan pushed her chocolate cheesecake across the table to me. I hadn’t gotten paid yet for November, so I had only ordered coffee. “Here,” she said. “Don’t you want it?” “Sure I want it. I ordered it. But I’m giving it to you.” “Why?” Meghan stood up and got me a fork. “Remember what Nora said about love? In your movie?” “Love is when you have a really amazing piece of cake, and it’s the very last piece, but you let him have it,” I said. “So it’s really amazing cake,” said Meghan. “And I want you to have it.

Face it. There's not going to be a happy ending... at least not with this hero. So don't go mooning around thinking that your breakup is only the crisis before the big romantic scene, because I'm here to tell you that it's not. When you are dumped, you are dumped, and the guy isn't going to change his mind and realize that suddenly he loves you instead of that girl he's flirting with in lunchroom, now that he's free.

These guys, they were so sure of their places in life--so deeply confident of their merit and their future--they didn't need any kind of front at all.