I'll love you until the day after forever.

I stared at the creased map on my wall, the thin green line connecting all the places I had read about. There they were, all the cities of my imaginary future, held together with tape and marker and pins. In six months, a lot had changed. There was no thin green line that could lead me to my future anymore. Just a girl.

The beginning of a book is always the hardest part for me. I'm a Chapter 3 kind of writer, which means I naturally start at Chapter 3.

If a girl says not to get her a birthday present that means get me a birthday present and make sure it's jewelry.

I said it, just like that. No stupid jokes, no changing the subject. For once, I wasn't embarrassed, because it was the truth. I had fallen. I think I had always been falling. And she might as well know, if she didn't already, because there was no going back now. Not for me.

In one moment I was feeling everything and I was feeling nothing.

I was a fine arts major in college, and a painter for many years. And I found that, like writing, art is very similar.