The bottom line is that we never fall for the people we're supposed to.

Relationships always sounded so physically painful: you fell in love, you broke a heart, you lost your head. Was it any wonder that people came through the experience with battle scars?

What does it feel like?” he asked. “What does what feel like?” Peter thought for a moment. “Being at the top.” Josie reached across him for another packet of material and fed it into the stapler. She did three of these, and Peter was certain that she was going to ignore him, but then she spoke. “Like if you take one wrong step,” she said, “you’re going to fall.

Parenting is really just a matter of tracking, of hoping your kids do not get so far ahead you can no longer see their next moves.

but if I've learned anything, it's that we don't know half of what we think we do. And we know ourselves least of all.

The bottom line in both cases is that people don't change; that no matter how charming you are and how fiercely you love, you cannot turn a person into something she's not.

In the custom of mourning, the fabric of the night had been ripped, revealing a star at each tiny tear.