Can't you just like a girl who likes you back?' 'None of them likes me back. I may as well like the one I really want.

Cath wanted to go back and rewrite every scene she'd ever written about Baz or Simon's chests. She'd written them flat and sharp and hard. Levi was all soft motion and breath, curves and warm hollows. Levi's chest was a living thing.

There’s no such thing as handsome princes, she told herself. There’s no such thing as happily ever after.

I don’t want to kiss a stranger,” Cath would answer. “I’m not interested in lips out of context.

You think that holding someone hard will bring them closer. You think that you can hold them so hard that you'll still feel them, embossed on you, when you pull away. Every time Eleanor pulled away from Park, she felt the gasping loss of him.

He'd stopped trying to bring her back. She only came back when she felt like it anyway, in dreams and lies and broken-down deja-vu.

Holding Eleanor's hand was like holding a butterfly. Or a heartbeat. Like holding something complete, and completely alive.