The imagination is a wonderful thing; it allows for all manner of undiscoverable sins.

If it's true love, then it will abide. If it was a fleeting crush, then it will turn to dust. Either way, the truth will out.

In fact, a case could be made that worrying about a problem actually prevents you from resolving it, because it deceives your mind into thinking that you're doing something when really you're not.

This is probably the advantage of being stupid. Stupid people just do. We tend to overthink. If we could eliminate the “over” and just think, then we could do, too. Only we’d be smarter doers because we’d be thinkers.

I focused on the passing houses filled with couples who’d somehow survived this teenage craziness of ‘he likes her but she likes him and he likes somebody else, you just can’t win.’ How did they do it? How did they end up in their golden, warm and cozy living rooms with their 2.3 children and dogs and cats? Because getting from where I was to where they were seemed millions of light years away.

In fiction, I searched for my favorite authors, women I have trusted to reassure me than not all teenage guys are total ditwads, that the archetype of the noble cute hero who devotes himself to the girl he loves has not gone the way of the rotary phone. That all I had to do was be myself (smart, hardworking, funny) and be patient and kind and he and I would find each other. As Bea would say, this why they call it fiction.

He's definitely one of those men you love before you get to know.