A Summer to Die

It's hard to give up the being together with someone.

It is so good to have friends who understand how there is a time for crying and a time for laughing, and that sometimes the two are very close together.

Time goes on, and your life is still there, and you have to live it. After a while you remember the good things more often than the bad. Then, gradually, the empty silent parts of you fill up with sounds of talking and laughter again, and the jagged edges of sadness are softened by memories.

...you can pretend that bad things will never happen. But life's a lot easier if you realize and admit that sometimes they do.

I don't know what she is now. A stranger, mostly. It's as if she has become a part of a different world, one that doesn't include me anymore....

But there's a whole world waiting, still, and there are good things in it.

She smiles, and her eyes look as if they can see back into her memory, into all the things that have gone into making a person what they are.

You know, sometimes it's nice to just have someone to blame, even if it has to be yourself, even if it doesn't make sense.

She's sure, absolutely sure, that what she's waiting for will happen, just the way she wants it to; and I'm so uncertain, so fearful my dreams will end up forgotten somewhere, someday, like a piece of string and a paperclip lying in a dish.

I laugh, because he knew what I was thinking, and very few people ever know what I'm thinking.

Dying is a very solitary thing. The only thing we can do it be there when she wants us there.

It wasn't the same. I'm pretty good at making the best of things, but it wasn't the same.

It's a funny thing about names, how they become a part of someone.

Maybe someday, if I succeed at something, I'll stop saying, "It isn't fair" about everything else.

It was the helplessness that scared the both of us.

It was because someone who was a real friend was having the exact same feelings I was having, about something that was more important to me than anything else. I bet there are people who go through a whole life and never experience that.

If you put pussy willows in water, they’ll blossom and then die. Just put them in the vase alone, and they’ll stay beautiful forever.

I mean, I wish I knew the right things to say to people. Sometimes I seem to just sit there.

Age is a meaningless commodity in most instances.

Well, things change. I just have to learn to adjust to what they change to. One

She needs us, for our love, but she doesn’t need us for anything else now.” He swallowed hard and said, “Dying is a very solitary thing.

We're so accustomed to laughing. It's harder for us when the time comes that we can't laugh.

Oh, sometimes it's just easier to please people," Maria said finally.

Let’s experiment. Someone must have figured it out once, in order to write a book. Why can’t we do the same thing?

He looked as if it hadn’t occurred to him that it might not matter.

I'm trying to ruin it!" Will had bellowed back. "So I can figure out how to do it perfectly! How can you learn anything if you won't take risks?