Everything, Everything

Everything's a risk. Not doing anything is a risk. It's up to you.

Maybe growing up means disappointing the people we love.

Life is a gift. Don't forget to live it.

Just because you can’t experience everything doesn’t mean you shouldn’t experience anything.

Sometimes I reread my favorite books from back to front. I start with the last chapter and read backward until I get to the beginning. When you read this way, characters go from hope to despair, from self-knowledge to doubt. In love stories, couples start out as lovers and end as strangers. Coming-of-age books become stories of losing your way. Your favorite characters come back to life.

You're not living if you're not regretting.

I was happy before I met him. But I’m alive now, and those are not the same thing.

prom·ise (ˈpräməs) n. pl. - es. 1. The lie you want to keep. [2015, Whittier]

Sometimes you do things for the right reasons and sometimes for the wrong ones and sometimes it’s impossible to tell the difference.

It's a hard concept to hold on to--the idea that there was a time before us. A time before time. In the beginning there was nothing. And then there was everything.

In my head I know I've been in love before, but it doesn't feel like it. Being in love with you is better than the first time. It feels like the first time and the last time and the only time all at once.

You can do every goddamn thing right, and your life can still turn to shit.

Wanting just leads to more wanting. There’s no end to desire.

You can't predict the future. It turns out that you can't predict the past either. Time moves in both directions - forward and backward - and what happens here and now changes them both.

My guilt is an ocean for me to drown in.

What colour are your eyes? Olly (O): blue Madeline (M): Be more specific please O: jesus. girls. ocean blue M: Atlantic or Pacific O: atlantic. What colour are yours? M: Chocolate brown. O: More specific please M: 75% cacao butter, dark chocolate brown O: hehe. nice

I've read many more books than you. It doesn't matter how many you've read. I've read more. Believe me.

I read once that, on average, we replace the majority of our cells every seven years. Even more amazing: we change the upper layers of our skin every two weeks. If all the cells in our body did this, we’d be immortal. But some of our cells, like the ones in our brains, don’t renew. They age, and age us. In two weeks my skin will have no memory of Olly’s hand on mine, but my brain will remember. We can have immortality or the memory of touch. But we can’t have both.

I was trying so hard to find the single pivotal moment that set my life on its path. The moment that answered the question, 'How did I get here?' But it's never just one moment. It's a series of them. And your life can branch out from each one in a thousand different ways. Maybe there's a version of your life for all the choices you make and all the choices you don't.

I decide then that love is a terrible, terrible thing. Loving someone as fiercely as my mom loves me must be like wearing your heart outside of your body with no skin, no bones, no nothing to protect it

For the first time in a long time, I want more than I have.

Here is my secret. It’s quite simple: One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.

as•ymp•tote (ˈasəm(p)ˌtōt) n. pl. -s. 1. A wish that continually approaches but never achieves fulfillment. [2015, Whittier]

Maybe we can't predict everything, but we can predict some things. For example, I am certainly going to fall in love with Olly. It's almost certainly going to be a disaster

Ocean: The endless part of yourself you never knew but always suspected was there. -Madeline (Madeline's Dictionary)

My heart is too bruised and I want to keep the pain as a reminder. I don't want sunlight on it. I don't want it to heal. Because if it does, I might be tempted to use it again.

If my life were a book and you read it backward, nothing would change. Today is the same as yesterday. Tomorrow will be the same as today. In the book of Maddy, all the chapters are the same. Until Olly.

How am I suppose to go back to my old life, my days stretching out before me with unending and brutal sameness? How am I supposed to go back to being The Girl Who Reads?