No relationship is perfect, ever. There are always some ways you have to bend, to compromise, to give something up in order to gain something greater…The love we have for each other is bigger than...

It’s not always easy being her daughter.’ I think,’ she said, ‘sometimes it’s hard no matter whose daughter you are.

the unknown wasn’t always the greatest thing to fear. The people who know you best can be riskier, because the words they say and the things they think have the potential to be not only...

You couldn’t just pick and choose at will when someone depended on you, or loved you. It wasn’t like a light switch, easy to turn on or off. If you were in, you were in....

We would probably never be the way we had been again, but at least we were all together.

There was something really great about being able to put something out into the world—a song, an introduction, even my voice—and let people make of it what they wanted. I didn’t have to worry about...

If you try anything, if you try to lose weight, or to improve yourself, or to love, or to make the world a better place, you have already achieved something wonderful, before you even begin....

There’s just something obvious about emptiness, even when you try to convince yourself otherwise.

It wasn’t about being happy or unhappy. I just didn’t want to be me anymore.

Love is so unpredictable. That’s what makes it so great.

what you have to decide, is how you want your life to be. if your forever was ending tomorrow, would this b the way you’d want to have spent it?

You don’t have to assume the worst about everyone, either. The world isn’t always out to get you.

He had a nice smile. Seeing it, I felt like I’d won a prize, because he was so sparing with them.

Family isn’t something that’s supposed to be static, or set. People marry in, divorce out. They’re born, they die. It’s always evolving, turning into something else.

Norman picked up a sketch, glanced at it, then put it back down on the table. “I saw Bea Williamson this morning,” he said in a low voice. “Lurking about looking for cut glass.” “Oh,...

Sure, it sucked to be lost, but I’d long ago realized I preferred it to depending on anyone else to get me where I needed to go. That was the thing about being alone, in...

Holding people away from you, and denying yourself love, that doesn’t make you strong. if anything, it makes you weaker. Because you’re doing it out of fear.

This is the problem with dealing with someone who is actually a good listener. They don’t jump in on your sentences, saving you from actually finishing them, or talk over you, allowing what you do...

We’d start slow, the way we always did, because the run, and the game, could go on for awhile. Maybe even forever.That was the thing. You just never knew. Forever was so many different things....

Your mother won a special reward,” she told me, “because everyone had a head in her pictures. We all applauded.

The future was one thing that could never be broken, because it had not yet had the chance to be anything.

There was something so heavy about the burden of history, of the past. I wasn’t sure I had it in me to keep looking back.

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,...

I would have thought this would make me feel better.. getting to be the one to leave and not the one left behind. But it didn’t. Not at all.

She bought seeds and raided nurseries and mulched and composted and spent full days with her hands full of earth, coaxing life our of the dry, dull grass my father had spent years pushing a...

He glanced over at me. ‘Scared? Of Reggie? What, she thinks he might force her to give up caffeine for real or something?”No,’ I said.’Of what, then?’ he asked.I paused, only just now realizing that...

You know, when it works, love is pretty amazing. It’s not overrated. There’s a reason for all those songs.

After all, it’s all kinds of things that make up a life, right? The big, like falling in love and spending time with your family, and the little….like blow drying your hair, applying concealer, and...

The best gifts come from the heart, not the store.

But in the real world, you couldnt really just split a family down the middle, mom on one side, dad the other, with the child equally divided between. It was like when you ripped a...

Nothing happens for ages, and then all the changes come at once.

Hey, and for what it’s worth? Friends don’t leave you alone in the woods. Friends are the ones who come and take you out.

The first thing I did when I got inside was turn on the kitchen light. Then I moved to the table, putting my dad’s iPod on the speaker dock, and a Bob Dylan song came...

It was like discovering that some part of you wasn’t yours at all. And it made me wonder what else I couldn’t claim.

funny how a beautiful song could tell such a sad story

It didn’t make you noble to step away from something that wasn’t working, even if you thought you were the reason for the malfunction. Especially then. It just made you a quitter. Because if you...

Yes,’ he said, ‘a list. That way, I figure, we’ll have a written record of what we’ve agreed upon as our goals for our relationship. So if problems arise, we’ll be able to consult the...

You said the other day life was long,’ I shot back. ‘Which is it?’ ‘It’s both,’ she said, shrugging. ‘It all depends on how you choose to live it. It’s like forever, always changing.’Kristy and...

He grinned again. We’d only been seeing each other for a few weeks now, but this easy give-and-take still surprised me. From that very first day in my room, I felt like we’d somehow skipped...

Family,” she announced. “They’re the people in your life you don’t get to pick. The ones that are given to you,as opposed to those you get to choose.””You’re bound to them by blood,” she continued,...

I wasn’t ready to think about the other yet: that it wasn’t that I wasn’t right for Macon, but that maybe he wasn’t right for me. There was a difference. Even for someone who things...

After the group vet appointment–during which Lyle scratched the vet, the vet tech, and some poor woman minding her own business in the waiting room–we went back to Sabrina’s and re-released the cats to their...

It’s hard to be nice when the rest of the world is so mean.

To me, summer has always been about potential. This was especially true when I was in high school. Those 3 or so months between 1 school year and the next always meant change. People got...

You can’t just plan a moment when things get back on track, just as you can’t plan the moment you lose your way in the first place.

Failing sucks. But it’s better than the alternative.””Which is?””Not even trying.” Now he did look at me, straight on. “Life’s short, you know?

I knew, in the silence that followed, that anything could happen here. It might be too late: again, I might have missed my chance. But I would at least know I tried, that I took...

Sometimes, you have to manufacture your own history. Give fate a push, so to speak.

…But that’s just the thing, right? Family isn’t something that’s supposed to be static or set. People marry in, divorce out. They’re born, they die. It’s always evolving, turning into something else.

You did listen.” He sat back, nodding his head. “Okay, then. Now tell me what you really thought.””I told you. It was interesting.””Interesting,” he said, “is not a word.””Since when?””It’s a placeholder. Something you use...