People, you'll find, aren't usually all good or bad. Sometimes they're just a little bit good and a whole lot bad. And sometimes they're mostly good with a dash of bad. And most of us, well, we fall in the middle somewhere.

Covers matter. In my experience, a different cover can make you think you're reading an entirely different book.

As many have discovered, it is entirely possible (although not particularly desirable) to love two people with all your heart. It is entirely possible to long for two lives, to feel that one life can't come close to containing it all.

You can't avoid orphan stories, child. Every story is an orphan story. We are all orphaned sooner or later.

For the longest time after that, neither of us said anything. I was unaccustomed to his silence, but I didn't mind it. I knew near everything about him, and he knew near everything about me, and all that made our quiet a kind of song. The kind you hum without even knowing what it is or why you're humming it. The kind that you've always known.

He kissed me, though not in a sexy way. Gentle. Tender.

Daddy once said, "If you don't know what you believe, Annie, you'll be a lost soul.