You can't hurt someone who doesn't care about you.

Sometimes grief is a comfort we grant ourselves because it's less terrifying than trying for joy.

If I'd known it was going to be the last time he'd ever hold me, I'd have paid better attention.

Good things, by their nature, are fleeting. It’s those that bring us grief that linger.

From the first time you laughed with me, all those months, and all those stories,” Joe said quietly. “They were all you, to me. All of them were you.

He was quiet. I said nothing, hoping that maybe, for once, he'd stop pretenting he was okay. Then I could, too. That we could both forget the roles that had so long bound us.

He hadn’t been her first lover or the first boy to give her an orgasm. He hadn’t even been the first she’d loved. He’d been the first to turn her inside out with something as simple as a smile. The first to make her doubt herself. He’d taken her deeper than anyone ever had, and yet she hadn’t drowned.