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

"We should have the right to have someone leave when we want, to only allow those in who we want in. But the truth is, people can force their way into your life whenever they choose. If they want to remind you forevermore that they exist, they will. They can reappear in a card or call or a 'chance' meeting, they can remember your birthday or the day you met with some innocuous small note. No matter how little they matter in your new life, they can insist on being seen and recognized and remembered."

"It was more work than it seemed, looking through a telescope, as the Earth was continually moving and you had to move along with it. You don't realize how fast this acutally happens, and it's kind of both creepy and wonderful when you stop to think about it. And it makes you realize there's absolutely no way to avoid change. You can sit there and cross your arms and refuse it, but underneath you, things are still spinning away."

"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 beyond your simple attempts at control."

"Family was even a bigger word than I imagined, wide and without limitations, if you allowed it, defying easy definition. You had family that was supposed to be family and wasn't, family that wasn't family but was, halves becoming whole, wholes splitting into two; it was possible to lack whole, honest love and connection from family in lead roles, yet to be filled to abundance by the unexpected supporting players."

"My most memorable teacher was Rich Campe, my third - grade teacher at Fairlands Elementary in Pleasanton, California."

"An untold story has a weight that can submerge you, sure as a sunken ship at the bottom of the ocean. I learned that. This kind of story, this kind of things kept secrets - they have the power to keep your head in forever, and most of all for yourself."

"In a world of insanity, nothing is sacred. It's an insane world, nothing is sacred."

"You have ordinary moments and ordinary moments and more ordinary moments, and then, suddenly, there is something monumental right there. You have the past and future colliding in the present, your own personal Big Bang, and nothing will ever be the same."

"Those questions you have? Whether he's the one, whether you feel about him the way you should, or whether the relationship is going okay? When you're not sure whether you're in love with someone or not, the answer is not."

"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 someone you don't know. But, I'm not so sure. 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 beyond your simple attempts at control."

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

"The most basic and somehow forgettable thing is this: Love is not pain. Love is goodness. And real love - it's less shiny than solid and simple."

"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 and human beings had in store."

"A relationship could be a place to hide too."

"I could forget that part, but it had to have been true."

"Good can sit in the distance, just beyond your view, waiting, until you go toward it."

"We are thickly layered, page lying upon page, behind simple covers. And love - it is not the book itself, but the binding."

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

"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."

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

"I don't get why prom is like a mini - wedding these days...No one should spend that kind of money for a high school dance."

"I love to see those paragliders weaving softly around Moon Point, their legs floating above you in the air. When they drift in for a landing, their feet touch the ground and they trot forward from the continued motion of the glider, which billows down like a setting sun. I never get tired of watching them and I've seen them thousands of times. I always wondered what that kind of freedom would feel like."

"Often enough, we owe our good fortune to someone else's loss."

"Marriage is like a well - built porch. If one of the two posts leans too much, the porch collapses. So each must be strong enough to stand on its own."

"I shouldn't have to be a liar to make someone love me. I shouldn't be so afraid of losing someone that I'll do anything to make them stay."

"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 degree, a wedding - something long - strived - for is completed, whatever the outcome, and there is a huge space where it all once was. All that open time now, and a continuing nagging sense that there's something you need to be doing."

"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 love. So much for soul mates. I'm sorry you don't want to believe the best or how I can change. You put a stake through the heart. I'm the only one who cared enough to suffer like this."

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

"If happiness shouldn't make you so miserable, misery shouldn't make you so happy."

"If time heals all wounds, and a book can hold a person's entire life, then you can speed up the process with a pulp time warp."

"Maybe it was wrong, or maybe impossible, but I wanted the truth to be one thing. One solid thing."

"Our memories and events in our lives are untidy things. We wish that we can file them away and shut the door, or wish the opposite - that they would stay forever."

"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 forms into something grotesque. You think its one thing, but then its another."

"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 good in the package."

"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 sprees, and let me tell you, the people who demand unconditional love are usually the ones who will rob and pillage and then blame you because you left your door unlocked."

"This is what I know. Don't settle for 40, 50, or even 80 percent. A relationship - it shouldn't be too small or too tight or even a little scratchy. It shouldn't take up space in your closet out of guilty conscience or convenience or a moment of desire. Do you hear me? It shold be perfect for you. It should be lasting. Wait. wait for 100 percent."

"That's what people do who love you. They put their arms around you and love you when you're not so lovable."

"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 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."