The Girl Who Chased the Moon

I'm homesick all the time," she said, still not looking at him "I just don't know where home is. There's this promise of happiness out there. I know it. I even feel it sometimes. But it's like chasing the moon - just when I think I have it, it disappears into the horizon. I grieve and try to move on, but then the damn thing comes back the next night, giving me hope of catching it all over again.

Men of thoughtless actions are always surprised by consequences.

It took me a long time to realize this: We get to choose what defines us.

My favorite books are the ones that make me smile for hours after reading them. I want that for my readers, for the sweetness to linger. Sort of like chocolate, but without the calories

I spent so much time telling myself that this wasn't home that I started to believe it,” she said carefully. “Belonging has always been tough for me.” “I can be your home,” he said quietly. “Belong to me.

Adolescence is like having only enough light to see the step directly in front of you.

Living down your own past was hard enough. You shouldn't have to live down someone else's.

How we see the world changes all the time. It all depends on our mood.

Some men you know are Southern before they ever say a word," Julia said as she and Emily watched Sawyer's progress, helpless, almost as if they couldn't look away. "They remind you of something good--picnics or carrying sparklers around at night. Southern men will hold doors open for you, they'll hold you after you yell at them, and they'll hold on to their pride no matter what. Be careful what they tell you, though. They have a way of making you believe anything, because they say it that way.

We have history, you and I. You just don’t know it yet.

Everything was quiet, a strange sort of quiet that felt like an unfinished sentence.

The words were strung in the air like garland. She could almost see them.

He might be tall enough to see into tomorrow, but he hadn’t looked there in a long, long time. He’d forgotten how bright it was. So bright he could hardly stand it.

Crystalline swirls of sugar and flour still lingered in the air like kite tails.

To think, after all this time, after all the searching and all the waiting, after all the regret and the time she'd spent away, she came back to find that happiness was right where she's left it. On a football field in Mullaby, North Carolina. Waiting for her.

There was a mood of magic and frenzy to the room. Crystalline swirls of sugar and flour still lingered in the air like kite tails. And then there was the smell-the smell of hope, the kind of smell that brought people home.

Southern men will hold doors open for you, they'll hold you after you yell at them, and they'll hold on to their pride no matter what. Be careful what they tell you, though. They have a way of making you believe anything, because they say it that way.

Blank-slate friendships were thin and temperamental. She knew that. There was no history there to cement people together, for better or worse.

It was like she was MADE of cake, light and pretty and decorated on the outside-with her sweet laugh and pink streak to her hair-but it was anyone's guess what was on the inside.

No one should ever compromise the dignity of another human being.

He reached for her and kissed her. It was all at once passionate, as if there was too much in him to contain. He was immediately swept up in it. It took no effort, the difference between swimming on your own and being washed away in a flood.

...a sad sort of vulnerability was wafting from her, making the night smell like maple syrup.

...she was still water in his hands. He didn't know how to hold on.

He'd always been fascinated by her, drawn to her the way curious people are always drawn to things they don't understand.

The word lethologica describes the state of not being able to remember the word you want.

The sky was incredible that night, the moon nearly full and the stars littering the sky like tossed stones.

life is too short to spend time with people' who suck the happiness "out of u"..

History is a loop. We're exactly where they stood twenty years ago. What's theirs is ours, what's ours will become theirs.

The comfort of browning butter and the excitement of lemon zest.

He lifted up on one elbow and looked down at her. What she wouldn't give to see what he saw, to know what made him look at her that way.