love wasn't possible in just a couple of days. Love could be set in motion quickly, but true love needed time to grow into something strong and enduring. Love was, above all, about commitment and dedication and a belief that spending years with a certain person would create something greater than the sum of what the two can accomplish separately.

When I look in the mirror, I know I’m looking at someone who isn’t sure she deserves to be loved at all.

It was one thing, after all, to know his feelings for Amanda hadn't changed; it was another thing entirely to face the future with the certainty that they never would.

You're probably the most boring teenager in the world.

I steeled myself to focus only on the present yet remain alert to what might come next.

That was the dirty secret associated with her past. Not that she'd been abused but that somehow she felt that she deserved it because she'd let it happen. Even now, it shamed her, and there were times when she felt hideously ugly, as though the scars that had been left behind were visible to everyone.

Everyone has a past, but that's just it--it's in the past. You can learn from it, but you can't change it.