Accepting all the good and bad about someone. It's a great thing to aspire to. The hard part is actually doing it.

I spent a lot of time looking at that picture. Wondering what I’d think of that girl, if I was someone else, seeing how easily she sits in her boyfriend’s lap, laughing, with his arms around her. I would have thought her life was perfect, the way I once thought Cass’s was. It was too easy, I was learning, to just assume things.

"It's gonna be okay," I said. It was the first time in a long time that I believed it. "It will."

I just have to be super strong when it comes to my work time. Shut the browser, ignore the email alerts, and just WRITE.

I think I'm way too much of a control freak to co-author anything with anyone. I have a hard enough time writing with myself! I admire people that can do it, but it's not for me.

She knew I could tell with one glance, one look, one simple instant. It was her eyes. Despite the thick makeup, they were still dark-rimmed., haunted, and sad. Most of all though, they were familiar. The fact that we were in front of hundreds of strangers changed nothing at all. I'd spent a summer with those same eyes-scared, lost, confused-staring back at me. I would have known them anywhere.

Because the truth sometimes hurts," I said. Yeah," he said. "So do lies, though.