We make such messes in this life, both accidently and on purpose. But wiping the surface clean doesn’t really make anything any neater. It just masks what is below. It’s only when you really dig...

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...

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...

You get used to people being a certain way; you depend on it. And when they surprise you, for better or worse, it can shake you to your core.

It was so risky and so scary, and yet at the same time, so beautiful. Maybe the truth was, it shouldn’t be easy to be amazing. Then everything would be. It’s the things you fight...

There comes a time when the world gets quiet and the only thing left is your own heart. So you’d better learn the sound of it. Otherwise you’ll never understand what it’s saying.

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

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.

It all counts,’ Adam said again. ‘And the bottom line is, what defines you isn’t how many times you crash, but the number of times you get back on the bike. As long as it’s...

It’s hard to do,” I said. Wes looked at me. “What is?” I swallowed, not sure why I’d said this out loud. “Get it right.

Shit,” Delia said. “I mean, shoot. No, actually, I mean shit. I really do.

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...

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...

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...

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...

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.

I remembered Owen telling me how music had saved him in Phoenix, that it drowned everything out, and it was the same for me now. As long as I had something to listen to, I...

As for me, I was just trying to get it right, whatever that means. But now I finally felt I was on my way. Everyone had a forever, but given a choice, this would be...

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...

Because you have to just go with the flow. Your life is not your own, with people coming in and out all the time. You get mellow because you have to.

…You can’t unlearn something, even if you want to. You know what you know.