I paused, only just now realizing that the subject was hitting a little close to home. "You know, getting hurt. Putting herself out there, opening up to someone." Yeah," he said adding some cheese straws to the cart, "but risk is just part of relationships. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't." I picked up a box of cheese straws, examining it. "Yeah," I said. "But it's not all about chance, either.

Shoulda, coulda, woulda. It's so easy in the past tense.

It shouldn't be easy to be amazing. Then everything would be. It's the things you fight for and struggle with before earning that have the greatest worth. When something's difficult to come by, you'll do that much more to make sure it's even harder ― or impossible ― to lose.

Each time, I think I'm never going to write another book. It never gets easier.

What is family? They were the people who claimed you. In good, in bad, in parts or in whole, they were the ones who showed up, who stayed there, regardless.

It was always late at night, when everything and everyone else was quiet, that those voices would rise like ghosts, soft and haunting, filling your mind until sleep finally came.

If you were dead," Owen told her, "you'd have bigger problems than what you were wearing.