Silence is so freaking loud

Everything hurt. I closed my eyes, pressing my cheek to the street, and waited. What for, I didn’t know. To be rescued. Or found. But no one came. All I’d ever thought I wanted was...

There’s something nice about the silence of a car ride in the dark, going home. When you were tired of the radio and conversation, and it was okay to just be alone with your thoughts...

The choices you make now, the people you surround yourself with, they all have the potential to affect your life, even who you are, forever.

But what he didn’t understand was that this dreamland was preferable,walking through this life half-sleeping,everything at arm’s length or farther away. I understood those mermaids.I didn’t care if they sang to me.All I wanted was...

Fifteen minutes later, a meeting was called. “Okay, look.” Deb’s face was dead serious. “I know I just joined this project, and I don’t want to offend anyone. But I’m going to be honest. I...

La música […] fue una vía de escape. Todo lo demás estaba cambiando o llegaba a su fin, pero la música era un recurso vasto, infinito.

Because that is what happens when you try to run from the past. It doesn’t just catch up: it overtakes, blotting out the future, the landscape, the very sky, until there is no path left...

Believe in yourself up here and it will make you stronger than you could ever imagine.

But I didn’t. I didn’t say anything, if only because I had no idea how to respond to such an overture. If my experience with friends was sparse, what I knew about boys- other than...

Why does she have wings?’So she can fly.

If you didn’t love him, this never would have happened. But you did. And accepting that love and everything that followed it is part of letting it go.

It seemed like this day could go in so many directions, like a spiderweb shooting out toward endless possibilities. Whenever you made a choice, especially one you’d been resisting, it always affected everything else, some...

Fine,” he repeated, and I wondered why it was I kept coming back to this, again and again, a word that you said when someone asked how you were but didn’t really care to know...

As Isabel acted out her date, both of them laughing, I stayed in the kitchen, out of sight, and pretended she was telling me, too. And that, for once, I was part of this hidden...

Isn’t it weird the way you remember things, when someone’s gone?

Grieving doesn’t make you imperfect. It makes you human.

Most people put off my mother’s erratic behavior to the fact that she was a writer, as if that just explained everything. To me that was just an excuse. I mean, brain surgeons can be...

Music is a total constant. That’s why we have such a strong visceral connection to it, you know? Because a song can take you back instantly to a moment, or a place, or even a...

That was the thing. You just never knew. Forever was so many different things. It was always changing; it was what everything was really about. It was twenty minutes, or a hundred years, or just...

You know, when it works, love is amazing. It’s not overrated.

The further you go, the more you have to be proud of. At the same time, in order to come a long way, you have to be behind to begin with. IN the end, though...

*Forever was so many different things.It was always changing; it was what everything was really all about.It was twenty minutes, or a hundred years, or just this instant, or any instant I wished would last...

Nah,” I said. “But if it does, just tell him I said to get back on the bike.””What?””He’ll understand.

I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be one of so many, to have not just parents and siblings but cousins and aunts and uncles, an entire tribe to claim as your own....

But as i lay there, it only seemes like silence filling my ears. And the thing was, it was so freaking loud.

Mmm-hmm,” Monica said aloud.

If you expect the worst, you’ll never be disappointed.

It’s not that I believe everything happens for a reason. It’s just that… I just think that some things are meant to be broken. Imperfect. Chaotic. It’s the universe’s way of providing contrast, you know?...

But you only get so many do-overs in this life, so many chances to, if not change your past, alter your future.

Don’t think or judge, just listen.

Like it takes so little not only to change something, but to make you forget the way it once was, as well.

So what’s your doll’s name?” Boo asked me.”Barbie,” I said. “All their names are Barbie.””I see,” she said. “Well, I’d think that would get boring, everyone having the samename.”I thought about this, then said, “Okay,...

What defines you isn’t how many times you crash but the number of times you get back.

With love like that, you can’t get pick about how it finds you or the details. All that matters is that it’s there. Better late than never.

Restoring order of my personal universe suddenly seemed imperative, as I refolded my T-shirts, stuffed the toes of my shoes with tissue paper, and arranged all the bills in my secret stash box facing the...

He wasn’t the type for displays of affection, either verbal or not. He was disgusted by couples that made out in the hallways between classes, and got annoyed at even the slightest sappy moments in...

Maybe the truth was, it shouldn’t be so easy to be amazing. Then everything would be. It’s the things you fight for and struggle with before earning that have the greatest worth. When something’s difficult...

Oh darling, don’t be bitter. It’s the first instinct of the weak.

You know? Kind. Good. Like in all those love stories I’m such an expert on. It can’t just be fiction. It can’t. Those guys are out there, I know it. I just can’t find them.”...

Sometimes there isn’t a good guy or a bad guy. Sometimes even the ones you want to believe turn out to be liars.

Jennifer Anne had prepared some complicated-looking recipe involving chicken breasts stuffed with sweet potatoes topped with a vegetable glaze. They looked perfect, but it was the kind of dish where you just knew someone had...

Suddenly, I was just sure he was going to kiss me. He was there, I could feel his breath, the ground solid beneath us. But then something crossed his face, a thought, a hesitation, and...

It’s just that…I just think that some things are meant to be broken. Imperfect. Chaotic. It’s the universe’s way of providing contrast, you know? There have to be a few holes in the road. It’s...

If this was my forever, I didn’t want to spend another second of it here.

That was the thing. You never got used to it, the idea of someone being gone. Just when you think it’s reconciled, accepted, someone points it out to you, and it just hits you all...

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...

Forever was so many different things.It was always changing; it was what everything was really all about.It was twenty minutes, or a hundred years, or just this instant, or any instant I wished would last...

Maybe if I’d agreed to do the debutante thing like she wanted. Or taken up pageants instead of riding jump bikes with a bunch of grungy boys. I’d always tell her, why can’t I do...

Well,’ she said, adjusting a pot lid, ‘I have my family of origin, which is you and Mom. And then Jaime’s family, my family of marriage. And hopefully, I’ll have another family, as well. Our...