Just Breathe

The time for falling in love was when you were emotionally available and free of cares, when it didn’t matter what time you came home or how late you were getting up the next day. When you had hours and hours to spend gazing into each other’s eyes and even longer hours making love, uninterrupted. If you wait for the perfect time to fall in love…it’ll never happen.

The human heart was such a complex organ, fragile and sturdy all at once.

I know you got your heart broken but I know the heart can heal, too. And I know what it feels like to love again. I love you so much, I can’t sleep at night. Sometimes I forget to breathe. And in a hundred years, that’s never going to change.

That’s how it is with infants. The minute the pain’s gone, so are the tears. If more people would do that, the world would be a happier place.

Unexpected change is like a breath of fresh air -- a little brisk at first, but magic for the body and soul.

As a child, she’d been a great reader, finding the ultimate escape within the pages of a story. She learned that opening a book was like opening a set of double doors—the next step would take her inside to Neverland or Nod, Sunnybrook Farm or Mulberry Street.

Just being a good person doesn’t necessarily entitle you to a good life.

her home; it just happened to be where she lived. This was the House that Jack Built, she thought, hearing the singsong rhythm of the old children’s story in her head. And this was the wife who lived in the house that Jack built. And there was the mistress that screwed the husband that ignored the wife who lived in the house that Jack built....

This job made it possible for you to stay home all day and draw pictures.

Listen, Sarah,” he said. “We have to deal with this. Just...take it easy. We’ll talk about it some more tonight.

The empty prairie, crisscrossed by a grid of startlingly straight roads, rolled out like a vast wasteland in front of the hood ornament of the GTO. It was remarkable, Sarah thought, how quickly the suburban sprawl of Chicago gave way to the broad gray-and-white checkerboard of the heartland at its most bleak.

watched as the earth mother turned into a corporate dominatrix, chewing out the legal counsel

She parked and got out of the car, feeling the wind sweep upward over her, lifting the hem of her jacket, ruffling her hair. She walked to the edge of the cliff and for a long time, stood frozen and stared as though mesmerized by the swirling, white-veined swells that gathered like great fists drawn back for a blow, then smashed themselves against the rocks below, exploding into a spray of diamonds. Some of the spray was so fine that a series of rainbows were thrown up, fleeting and blurred, one after another. The pounding of the sea made a strange and compelling music, driving her to surrender to the feelings inside her.

Maybe, she thought, the secret to a happy life was learning to get through the unhappy periods intact.

the one who was lost. It was as if someone had pulled a dark hood over her face, spun her around until she was dizzy, then thrust her forward, to grope her way blindly through life, praying she would find something to hold on to.

but in a town full of nobodys, she’s practically somebody.

the main character saying things like “In my world, chocolate is a vegetable.

This was the House that Jack Built, she thought, hearing the singsong rhythm of the old children’s story in her head. And this was the wife who lived in the house that Jack built. And there was the mistress that screwed the husband that ignored the wife who lived in the house that Jack built....