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.

There seemed to be so much to say, but no words adequate to say it.

What are you, Elle? Are you a ghost? Are you an angel or a demon? Because you can’t be real.

Choices. We all make them, sometimes more than once. Sometimes it's the choices we make over and over that define us, but more often it's the choices we don't make.

We labored under the pretense that nothing had changed when everything had, and I understood him, but i no longer knew him.

Sometimes grief is a comfort we grant ourselves because it's less terrifying than trying for joy. Nobody wants to admit it. We'd all declare we want to be happy, if we could. So why, then, is pain the one thing we most often hold on to? Why are slights and griefs the memories on which we choose to dwell? Is it because joy doesn't last but grief does?

You never fall in love with anyone the same way you fell in love with someone else. It's always different, every time, if you're lucky-or cursed-enough to have it happen more than once. But I've never been uncertain about love, not any of the times I found myself in it. Love is always real, even when it doesn't last.