“Being temporary doesn't make something matter any less, because the point isn't for how long, the point is that it happened.”
“We mourn the future because it's easier than admitting that we're miserable in the present.”
“In AP Bio, I learned that the cells in our body are replaced every seven years, which means that one day, I'll have a body full of cells that were never sick. But it also means that parts of me that knew and loved Sadie will disappear. I'll still remember loving her, but it'll be a different me who loved her. And maybe this is how we move on. We grow new cells to replace the grieving ones, diluting our pain until it loses potency.
The percentage of my skin that touched hers will lessen until one day my lips won't be the same lips that kissed hers, and all I'll have are the memories. Memories of cottages in the woods, arranged in a half-moon. Of the tall metal tray return in the dining hall. Of the study tables in the library. The rock where we kissed. The sunken boat in Latham's lake, Sadie, snapping a photograph, laughing the lunch line, lying next to me at the movie night in her green dress, her voice on the phone, her apple-flavored lips on mine. And it's so unfair.
All of it.”
“Art is pain. And so is life.”
“Because the thing about miracles is that they’re not answers, no matter how much we want them to be.”
“..pain can't be taken away. It has to leave on its own. And I wasn't sure mine was the type of pain that wanted to go away.”
“I have a theory that life is gathering the raw materials, and when we die, we get to make patterns out of our lives and relive them in whatever order we want. That way I can spend forever repeating the days when I was really happy, and never have to experience any of the sad days. So that's how you live a really great life. You make sure you have enough good days that you want to go back to.”
“It's strange how can lose things that are still right there. How a barrier can go up at any moment, trapping you on the other side, keeping you from what you want. How the things that hurt the most are things we once had.”
“But at the last minute, I turned left, because I never had before, and because I had time to go down a different road.”
“At Latham House, we were asked to believe in unlikely miracles. In second chances. We woke up each morning hoping that the odds had somehow swung in our favor.
But that’s the thing about odds. Roll a die twice, and you expect two different results. Except it doesn’t work that way. You could roll the same side over and over again, the laws of the universe intact and unchanging with each turn. It’s only when you consider the past that the odds change. That things become less and less likely.
Here’s something I know because I’m a nerd: up until the middle of the twentieth century, dice were made out of cellulose nitrate. It’s a material that remains stable for decades but, in a flash, can decompose. The chemical compound breaks down, releasing nitric acid. So every time you roll a die, there’s a small chance that it won’t give you a result at all, that instead it will cleave, crumble, and explode.”
“Now can you rate your pain for me on a scale of one to ten?"
But I couldn't. It seemed so wrong to me then that there were only ten options, only ten types of pain. Because I'm pretty sure there are hundreds of types of pain in this world, maybe even thousands. And none of these are numbers on the same scale. They all hurt differently, and amounts have nothing to do with it. They all hurt too much, and not enough.”
“I read once that we’re all just dead stars looking back up to the sky, because everything we’re made of, even the hemoglobin in our blood, comes from the moment before a star dies.”
“I didn’t want to kiss you good-bye—that was the trouble— I wanted to kiss you good night— and there’s a lot of difference. —ERNEST HEMINGWAY Draw your chair up close to the edge of the precipice and I’ll tell you a story. —F. SCOTT FITZGERALD”
“It had hurt to accept what was wrong with me, but it hurt even more to have hope.”
“They say your skin is the largest organ in your body, but I'd never really appreciated that before, the way his fingertips slowly tracing the curve of my jaw could travel down the entire length of my body, covering me in goose bumps. The way he could make me feel flushed with something that wasn't fever.”
“Because that's all you can do in this world, no matter how strong the current beats you, or how heavy your burden, or how tragic your love story. You keep going.
It took a lot of things to make me realize that. To make me see the path, as the destination.”
“The dead never listen when you want to tell them anything.”
“I'm so sorry. I always felt like there was something off about me, and now I know. I'm broken."
It wrecked me all over again to hear her say that.
"You're not broken."
"Then how come I can't be fixed?" she asked, shaking as she held back tears. "If I'm not broken, how come no one can fix me?”
“Start as you mean to go on.”
“One thing I've realized about new places is that they're like jeans. Sure, they might fit in, but they're not comfortable. They need time to be broken in”
“I had a massive bed at home, and I loved her dearly. She was my queen, and I was her loyal subject.”
“I just hadn't wanted to admit it, because admitting it meant acknowledging the possibility that the odds might be in my favor. And that possibility was terrifying.”
“I didn't realise you'd ridden here on your high horse”
“Well, fresh air's supposedly good for us,' I said.
'Breathing: The miracle cure everyone's been looking for.”
“Usually spending any amount of time with someone was a forcible reminder of how much I'd rather be alone.”
“Sometimes a day last an hour, and sometimes it lasts a year”
“These kids are already hard. They don't need to be made harder. The issue is softening them up. They need to learn how to care about life again. They've lost that. That's what we need to give back to them.”
“Is there a difference between loving someone and being in love with someone?”
“Animals! the object of insatiable interest, examples of the riddle of life, created, as it were, to reveal the human being to man himself, displaying his richness and complexity in a thousand kaleidoscopic possibilities, each of them brought to some curious end, to some characteristic exuberance.”
“The usual treatment is psychotherapy.” “I know.” I didn’t explain that I was single. Therapy is for couples. So is Christmas. So is camping. So is beach camping.”
“The people who hate Obamacare don’t hate it because they believe that it’s funded by forced purchases rather than forced taxes; what they hate is the forcing. Obamacare might not be socialism, but it’s certainly more collectivist than some people care for, restricting individual freedom in the name of the greater good. •”
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