Even his highly emotional Italian mother didn't believe that true love could blossom overnight. Like his brothers and sisters-in-law, she wanted nothing more for him than to marry and start a family, but if he showed up at her doorstep and said that he'd met someone two days ago and knew she was the one for him, his mother would smack him with a broom, curse in Italian, and drag him to church, sure that he had some serious sins that needed confessing.

I have some art, but I am a hobbyist. I would not consider myself an expert but in the course of writing this novel I became very familiar with the various movements in American Modern Art from 1900 onwards.

One day you're going to learn something that can't be explained with science. And when that happens, your life's going to change in ways you can't imagine.

Knowing there's one thing I still haven't told you: I now believe, by the way, that miracles can happen.

But if it couldn't be love and it didn't feel like lust, what was it? Like? Did he like her? Of course, he did, but that word didn't capture his feelings, either. It was a little too... vague and soft around the edges. People liked ice cream. People liked to watch television. It meant nothing, and it didn't come close to explaining why, for the first time, he felt the urge to tell someone the truth.

But no matter what was going on in our lives, I could imagine lying beside her in bed at the end of the day, holding her while we talked and laughed, lost in each other's arms

Then we'll find a way to work through all this together because I know I want to spend the rest of my life with you.