“You don't love someone because they're perfect, you love them in spite of the fact that they're not.”

“I wondered what happened when you offered yourself to someone, and they opened you, only to discover you were not the gift they expected and they had to smile and nod and say thank you all the same.”

“and he suddenly knew that if she killed herself, he would die. Maybe not immediately, maybe not with the same blinding rush of pain, but it would happen. You couldn't live for very long without a h...”

“I'm lonely. Why do you think I had to learn to act so independent? I also get mad too quickly, and I hog the covers, and my second toe is longer than my big one. My hair has it's own zip code. Plus...”

“The damage was permanent; there would always be scars. But even the angriest scars faded over time until it was difficult to see them written on the skin at all, and the only thing that remained wa...”

“My mother... she is beautiful, softened at the edges and tempered with a spine of steel. I want to grow old and be like her.”

“In your life, the people become like a patchwork quilt. Some leave with you a piece that is bigger than you wanted and others smaller than you thought you needed. Some are that annoying itchy squar...”

“If she spoke, she would tell him the truth: she was not okay at all, but horribly empty, now that she knew what it was like to be filled.”

“All was in God's plan, and he had to accept even as he didn't understand.”

“It took me years to figure out that upset was upset, and tumultuousness was not the same thing as passion. Love isn't drama.”

“I just wanted to tell you that I understand if you go. Its okay if you have to leave us. Its okay if you want to stop fighting.”

“I'd heard of Evergreen Care Center before. Cass and I had always made fun of the stupid ads they ran on TV, featuring some dragged-out woman with a limp perm and big, painted-on circles under her e...”

“But in that moment I understood what they say about nostalgia, that no matter if you're thinking of something good or bad, it always leaves you a little emptier afterward.”

“The music has teased and tickled me in an empty space that the most vacuous.”

“My life is never empty because my heart is always full.”