In my family, we seem to have a tortured history of not saying what we ought to and not meaning what we do.

It turns out that sharing the past with someone is different from reliving it when you’re alone. It feels less like a wound, more like a poultice.

Raw love, like raw heartache, could blindside you.

love doesn't follow the rules... nothing is worth having so much as something unattainable.

If she spoke, she would tell him the truth: she was not okay at all, but horribly empty, now that she knew what it was like to be filled.

My mother... she is beautiful, softened at the edges and tempered with a spine of steel. I want to grow old and be like her.

I think a persons life is supposed to be like a DVD. You can see the version everyone else sees, or you can choose the directors cut-the way he wanted you to see it, before everything else got in the way. There are menus, probably, so that you can start at the good spots and not have to relive the bad ones. You can measure your life by the number of scenes you’ve survived, or the minutes you’ve been stuck there. Probably, though, life is more like one of those dumb video surveillance tapes. Grainy, no matter how hard you stare at it. And looped: the same thing, over and over.