He smiles at me, and I am suddenly seventeen again - the year I realize that love doesn't follow the rules, the year I understood that nothing is worth having so much as something unattainable

Raw love, like raw heartache, could blindside you.

I used to pretend that I was just passing through this family on my way to my real one.

But there is a different between mending someone who's broken and finding someone who makes you complete.

What she hadn't realized was that sometimes when your vision was that sharp and true, it could cut you. That only if you'd felt such fullness could you really understand the ache of being empty.

The world is a place where the extraordinary can sit just beside the ordinary with the thinnest of boundaries; that even in environments inhospitable to man, all sort of entities might thrive.

The bigger the hole inside you, the more desperate you became to fill it.