You can't change where you come from, but you can change where you go from here. Just like a book. If you don't like the ending, you make up a new one.

Your peers when you're a teenager will always be the keepers of your embarrassment and regret. It was one of life's great injustices, that you can move on and be accomplished and happy, but the moment you see someone from high school you immediately become the person you were then, not the person you are now.

Embarrassment felt a lot like eating chili peppers. It burned in the back of your throat and there was nothing you could do to make it go away. You just had to take it, suffer from it, until it eased off.

People always say life is too short for regrets. But the truth is, it's too long.

To think, after all this time, after all the searching and all the waiting, after all the regret and the time she'd spent away, she came back to find that happiness was right where she's left it. On a football field in Mullaby, North Carolina. Waiting for her.

Crystalline swirls of sugar and flour still lingered in the air like kite tails.

Always make your needs and expectations known,she used to say. That way no one gets hurt.