You fell in love with someone because of the tilt of his smile, or because he could make you laugh, or in this case, because he made you believe that you were the only one who could save him.

Parents aren’t the people you come from. They’re the people you want to be, when you grow up.

I know Mark,' I reply. 'And I don't like him.' 'But I do. And part of being social means being civil to someone you don't like.' 'That's stupid. It's a huge world. why not just get up and walk away?' 'Because that's rude,' Jess explains. 'I think it's rude to stick a smile on your face and pretend you like talking to someone when in reality you'd rather be sticking bamboo slivers under your fingernails.

I've never been in love, but I've always imagined it--weirdly--like some sort of OxiClean commercial. The TV host shows a scene from an ordinary day, and then takes a big old sponge soaked in love and swipes away the stains. Suddenly that same scene is missing all the mistakes, all the loneliness. The colors are like jewels, ten times richer than they were before. The music is louder and clearer. "Love," the host will say, "makes life a little brighter.

Maybe you had to leave in order to really miss a place; maybe you had to travel to figure out how beloved your starting point was... ...Parents aren't the people you come from. They're the people you want to be, when you grow up. I sat between my mother and my father, watching strangers on TV carry in Shaker rockers and dusty paintings and ancient beer tankards and cranberry glass dishes; people and their hidden treasures, who had to be told by experts that they'd taken something incredibly precious for granted.

If you spent your life concentrating on what everyone else thought of you, would you forget who you really were? What if the face you showed the world turned out to be a mask... with nothing beneath it?

It felt like I'd been living underground, and for a moment, I'd been given this glimpse of the sky. Once you've seen that, how can you go back where you came from?