I think I see the difference now, between loving someone from afar and loving someone up close. When you see them up close, you see the real them, but they also get to see the real you.

Sometimes it’s like people are a million times more beautiful to you in your mind. It’s like you see them through a special lens—but maybe if it’s how you see them,that’s how they really are.It’s like the whole tree falling in the forest thing.

We stood there, looking at each other, saying nothing. But it was the kind of nothing that meant everything.

Firsts are best because they are beginnings

But the little things are what make up life

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

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.