It was strange to have those papers signed. Like any big project or crisis that takes every waking and non-waking moment in your life, it was odd to have it concluded. A move, a college...

To be devasted, or to let the truth in, finally, finally, all the way, all the way, all the way, until it fills you with its own strength, with it’s own knowledge–that love is light...

A relationship could be a place to hide too.

If letting go, if letting people and things work themselves out in the way that they needed to without your help was the most important thing, then it was also the hardest.

It starts so young, and I’m angry about that. The garbage we’re taught. About love, about what’s “romantic.” Look at so many of the so-called romantic figures in books and movies. Do we ever stop...

But what I wanted back had never really been there. He was a temporary illusion, a mirage of water after walking in the desert. I had made him up. And he could have killed me....

You read all kinds of books and see all kinds of movies about the man who is obsessed and devoted, whose focus is a single solid beam, same as the lighthouse and that intense, too....

You can forget that other people carry pieces of your own story around in their heads. I’ve always thought–put together all those random pieces form everyone who’s ever known you from your parents to the...

summer, after all, is a time when wonderful things can happen to quiet people. for those few months, you’re not required to be who everyone thinks you are, and that cut-grass smell in the air...

Life and our love for others is a balancing act, I understand then; a dance between our instinct to be safe and hold fast, and our drive to flee, to run – from danger, toward...

They say religion is about love, but you wonder how much of it really is about fear.

I guess forgiveness, like happiness, isn’t a final destination. You don’t one day get there and get to stay.

We were right to come here, if only because the ocean reminded you that impossible things were possible. Miles and miles of the deepest waters that moved like clockwork were possible. Creatures like jellyfish and...

You’ve got to have someone who loves your body. Who doesn’t define you, but sees you. Who loves what he sees. Who you don’t have to struggle to be good enough for.

So I put up with bad behavior in the name of loving the way I thought you were supposed to love.

I kept trying to talk myself out of my second thoughts when they were trying to help me. My advice? When it comes to relationships, second thoughts should be promoted.

The magic of purpose and of love in its purest form. Not televison love, with its glare and hollow and sequined glint; not sex and allure, all high shoes and high drama, everything both too...

More than anything, I like just being there while he works, doing what he knows to do, in his own place.

We should not give away a moment to anyone who does not deserve it.

I used to think that finding the right one was about the man having a list of certain qualities. If he has them, we’d be compatible and happy. Sort of a checkmark system that was...

I am beginning to think there are two kinds of people,” she said. I waited. “Those who forgive themselves too easily but will not forgive others.” “And?” I asked. “Those that forgive others too easily...

…forever is hard enough without it beginning now.

It’s good to let God pick a man for you. We don’t do so well when we pick them ourselves. They end up lipsticks in a drawer, all those wrong colors you thought looked so...

It was about the way a moment, a single moment, could change things and make you decide to try to be someone different.

You could try and understand people, you could read books and understand words and concepts and ideas, but you could never understand enough or have enough knowledge to keep away the surprises that both fate...

To an untrained eye, need and love were as easily mistaken for each other as the real master’s painting and a forgery.

Supposedly there’s an actual, researched link between extreme creativity and mental illness, and I believe it because I’ve seen it with my own eyes.

I thought about him everyday until then. I started having these conversations with him in my head that you have when you meet someone you sense is going to be important in your life.

The loneliness you feel with another person, the wrong person, is the loneliest of all.

Fate’s got a fucking sick sense of humor. Fate is a shape-shifter. It’s the kindest and most generous entity imaginable, laying out more goodness than a person deserves, and then it shrinks and curls and...

You have the ability to just go on and forget people and how much they are meant, but I don’t. You can people in their own little boxes and leave them there. So much for...

Sometimes love is a surprise, an instant of recognition, a sudden gift at a sudden moment that makes everything different from then on. Some people will say that’s not love, that you can’t really love...

Love doesn’t seem to follow a plan; it’s not a series of steps. It can hit with the force of nature – an earthquake, a tidal wave, a storm of wild, relentless energy that is...

Unconditional love is like a contry of two with no laws and no government. Which is all fine if everyone is peaceful and law abiding. In the wrong hands, though, you got looting and crime...

A person shows signs of clutching on too fast, of being needy, of not hearing the word “no,” of jealousy, of guarding you and your freedom. But the signs can be so small they skitter...

Running away can also be running to.

You can want one thing and have a secret wish for its opposite.

Sometimes good choices are really bad ones, wrapped up in so much fear you can’t even see straight.

The way two people can and everything place, find each other in a crowd, and change your life the lives of the people around them forever… It makes you believe in fate. In fate love...

I was like a chocolate in a box, looking well behaved and perfect in place, all the while harboring a secret center.

When what you want is a relationship, and not a person, get a dog.

Rejection, though–it could make the loss of someone you weren’t even that crazy about feel gut wrenching and world ending.

Because what is more like love than the ocean? You can play in it, drown in it. It can be clear and bright enough to hurt your eyes, or covered in fog; hidden behind a...