When a person you love dies, it doesn’t feel real. It’s like it’s happening to someone else. It’s someone else’s life. I’ve never been good with the abstract. What does it mean when someone is really truly gone?

I've always loved the first day of school better than the last day of school. Firsts are best because they are beginnings.

There's no use in asking what if. No one could ever give you the answers.

Love is scary: it changes; it can go away. That's the part of the risk. I don't want to be scared anymore.

For me there was-is-nothing better than walking on the beach late at night. It feels like you could walk forever, like the whole night is yours and so is the ocean. When you walk on the beach at night, you can say things you can't say in real life. In the dark you can feel really close to a person. You can say whatever you want.

Do you know what it's like to like someone so much you can't stand it and know that they'll never feel the same way

Aching familiar in a way that made me wish I was still eight. Eight was before death or divorce or heartbreak. Eight was just eight. Hot dogs and peanut butter, mosquito bites and splinters, bikes and boogie boards. Tangled hair, sunburned shoulders, Judy Blume, in bed by nine thirty.