“Life is long. Just because you don't get your chance right when you want or expect it doesn't mean it won't come. Fate doesn't punch a time clock or consult a schedule.”
“The truth was, there was no way everything could be the Best. Sometimes, when it came to events and people, it had to be okay to just be.”
“The thing is, you can’t always have the best of everything. Because for a life to be real, you need it all: good and bad, beach and concrete, the familiar and the unknown, big talkers and small towns.”
“It takes so little to change everything. If you really thought about it, it would scare you to death.”
“We were willing to do so much for the people we loved, even if it meant hurting ourselves. Maybe that, in the end, was what love- all kinds- was really about.”
“There's a difference between the words father and dad. And it's more than three words.”
“When you've never gotten love from someone, you don't know what it might look like if it ever does appear. You look for it in everything: any bright light overhead could be a star.”
“The mistakes you make now count. Not for everything, and not forever. But they do matter, and they shape you.If you take nothing else from what I've been through, at least remember this: make your choices well. Because you'll always be accountable for them. That's what being an adult is all about.”
“But the bottom line is that, as humans, we are by nature selfish creatures. The only way we care about anything, really, is by making it about us.”
“It's always very pure, that last moment before an ugly, unsettling truth hits someone. The most stark of before-and-afters.”
“It was such a weird thing how a breakup stretched much wider than you expected. You didn't just lose a person, but their entire world as well.”
“How weird that must be, to stay the same as everyone else changes.”
“It's funny how two people can grow up in the same town, go to the same school, have the same friends, and end up so totally different. Family, or lack of it, counts for more than you'd think.”
“You can never be sure of anyone until you're close enough to see them clearly.”
“I would miss Colby, but it wasn't going anywhere. All the more reason why I should.”
“Maybe it was just part of growing up with someone. Once you have a rhythm and stay with it long enough, it's not hard to find again.”
“Change is inevitable, though," he replied. "As is disappointment. Best to get used to it now.”
“Again, it occurred to me how weird it was to be permanent in a place that to everyone else was only temporary. Like I could never be sure if they were the ones who weren't real, or if I was.”
“When you have a kid, you sign on for the whole package: good, bad, everything in between. you can't just dip in and out, picking and choosing the parts you want and quitting when it's not perfect.”
“I'm sorry," I heard him say again. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a sudden blur of movement as he slid out of his seat, left some bills for the breakfast he wouldn't eat, and walked away. And as he did, I thought again of those mornings in the hallway at school, way back in ninth grade. Everything had started in such sharp detail, each aspect pronounced and clear. Obviously, endings were different. Harder to see, full of shapes that could be one thing or another, with all the things that you were once so sure of suddenly not familiar, if they were even recognizable at all.”
“And trying to break it down this way, to minor and major offenses, maybes and what-ifs, was like arguing over the origin of cracks in a broken egg. It was done. How it happened didn't matter anymore.”
“Morris was not the type to offer a hug or even hold your hand. But there was something in his quiet indignation at the universe then--and Luke, now--that was just the kind of comfort I needed.
"I'm such a mess," I said. "We're almost off the island and I didn't even ask you where you were going."
He shrugged. "No place. Wherever you are.”
“Everything had started in such sharp detail, each aspect pronounced and clear. Obviously, endings were different. Harder to see, full of shapes that could be one thing or another, with all the things that you were once so sure of suddenly not familiar, if they were even recognizable at all.”
“You need demarcation."
"Demarcation?" I asked.
"It means a clear separation between two things," he told me. "A solid end before a clean beginning. No murky borders. Clarity.”
“From what I could see, the hardwood was just fine. Then again, I'd just see a windmill and an open sky, too, never feeling the need to conquer either. You think it's all obvious and straightforward, this world. But really, it's all in who is doing the looking.”
“Finally he asks, "What if that's not enough? What if I need something else?"
And she replies, "Whatever you need, I will find a way to get it to you. I will give you the moon, and more.”
“It [I'm leaving] wasn't really necessary to say, especially if you were already walking away. Almost redundant. And yet, there was a comfort in being no question, no room for doubt.”
“Being a star requires risk-taking shoes.”
“I'm starting to think, though, that some things never get that. The replay, and all. So at some point you have to make peace with it as it is, not keep waiting for a chance to change it”
“Meanwhile, Morris settled into his seat with his signature slouch, neither knowing nor caring where I was taking him. Like destinations, in general, were vastly overrated. And maybe they were. As long as you were moving, you were always going somewhere.”
“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven,”
“Nothing good happened to Romeo or Juliet.”
“Being with Josh is like being touched from the inside out. An unexpected blaze of sunshine on an otherwise bleak winter day. Wrapping your fingers around a mug of hot chocolate after walking home in that frigid lake-effect wind. A fire crackling softly beneath your outstretched hands. The perfect combination of cupcake and icing, the kind where you can’t quite identify all the secret ingredients, but you feel them melting together on your tongue, and you know that for as long you live, this will be the best thing you’ve ever tasted.”
“He'd waited a thousand years for her, and she would know him for less than two weeks.”
“Physics, mathematics, music, painting, my politics, my love for you, my work, the star-dust of my body, the spirit that impels it, clocks diurnal, time perpetual, the roll, rough, tender, swamping, liberating, breathing, moving, thinking nature, human nature and the cosmos are patterned together.”
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