Maybe if I'd been braver in that moment, I would have cried.

I wondered if the person who really loves you is the person who knows all your stories, the person who WANTS to know all your stories.

You know everything you need to know about a person from the answer to the question, What is your favorite book?

The things we respond to at twenty are not necessarily the same things we will respond to at forty and vice versa. This is true in books and also in life

There's the tree with the branches that everyone sees, and then there's the upside-down root tree, growing the opposite way. So Earth is the branches, growing in opposing but perfect symmetry. The branches don't think much about the roots, and maybe the roots don't think much about the branches, but all the time, they're connected by the trunk, you know?

"I accept your condemnation," I said.

Above all, mine is a love story. Unlike most love stories, this one involves chance, gravity, a dash of head trauma. It began with a coin toss. The coin came up tails. I was heads. Had it gone my way, there might not be a story at all. Just a chapter, or a sentence in a book whose greater theme had yet to be determined. Maybe this chapter would've had the faintest whisper of love about it. But maybe not. Sometimes, a girl needs to lose.