"Envy, after all, comes from wanting something that isn't yours. But grief comes from losing something you've already had."

"But love wasn't about sacrifice, and it wasn't about falling short of someone's expectations. By definition, love made you better than good enough; it redefined perfection to include your traits, instead of excluding them. All any of us wanted, really, was to know that we counted. That someone else's life would not have been as rich without us here."

"There are kinds of pain that you can't speak out loud."

"When you think you're right, you're most likely wrong."

"When you get down to it, though, explaining what you believe isn't all that easy. If you say that you believe something to be true, you might mean one of two things-that you're still weighing the alternatives, or that you accept it as a fact. I don't logically see how one single word can have contradictory definitions, but emotionally, I completely understand. Because there are times I think what I am doing is right, and there are other times I second-guess myself every step of the way."

"Turn around, and the people you thought you knew might change. Your little boy might now live half a world away. Your beautiful daughter might be sneaking out at night. Your ex-husband might by dying by degrees. This is the reason that dancers learn, early on, how to spot while doing pirouettes: we all want to be able to find the place where we started."

"Sometimes we don't know we're dreaming, we can't even fathom that we're asleep."

"A woman isn't all that different from a bonfire. A fire's a beautiful thing, right? Something you can't take your eyes off, when it's burning. If you can keep it contained, it'll throw light and heat for you. It's only when it gets out of control that you have to go on the offensive."

"Suffering so someone else didn't have to suffer. Sacrificing your body for someone else's well being."

"What he did was wrong. He doesn't deserve your love. But he does deserve your forgiveness, because otherwise he will grow like a weed in your heart until it's choked and overrun. The only person who suffers, when you squirrel away all that hate, is you."

"It turns out that sharing the past with someone is different from reliving it when you're alone. It feels less like a wound and more like a poultice."

"What I want, more than anything, is to turn back time a little. To become the kid I used to be, who believed whatever my mother said was one hundred percent true and right without looking hard enough to see the hairline cracks."

"I think there are two different oceans - the one that plays with you in the summer, and the one that gets so mad in the winter."

"Neither of us, it turns out, has been the only one who lost someone she loved."

"For better or for worse, music is the language of memory. It is also the language of love."

"If you live in each other's pockets long enough, you're related."

"They don't like the thought of someone else making demands on the person whom they see as belonging entirely to them."

"It was so damn hard to find love in this world, to locate someone who could make you feel that there was a reason you'd been put on this earth. A child, I imagined, was the purest form of that. A child was the love you didn't have to look for, didn't have to prove anything to, didn't have to worry about losing. Which is why, when it happened, it hurt so badly."

"You will ask me, after this, why, I didn't tell you this before. It is because I know how powerful a story can be. It can change the course of history. It can save a life. But it can also be a sinkhole, a quicksand in which you become stuck, unable to write yourself free."

"There was no black or white. Someone who had been good her entire life could, in fact, do something evil. People were just as capable of committing murder, under the right circumstances, as any monster."

"You want to know what I want? I'm sick of being a guinea pig. I'm sick, but I'm never f*cking sick enough for this family."

"So you know what mean when I say that I don't think anyone who falls in love has a choice. You're just pulled to that person like true north, whether it's good for you or bound to break your heart."

"I have a sister, so I know-that relationship, it's all about fairness: you want your sibling to have exactly what you have-the same amount of toys, the same number of meatballs on your spaghetti, the same share of love. But being a mother is completely different. You want your child to have more than you ever did. You want to build a fire underneath her and watch her soar. It's bigger than words."

"When it comes to memories, the good and the bad never balance."

"And he suddenly knew that if she killed herself, he would die. Maybe not immediately, maybe not with the same blinding rush of pain, but it would happen. You couldn't live for very long without a heart."

"Like the teens I worked with, I understood the need for miracles--they kept reality from paralyzing you."

"In the English language there are orphans and widows, but there is no word for the parents who lose a child."

"How do you do it?""Do what?""All of it. You know. Go to class and practice. Make it through the day. Act like ... like none if it mattered."Jason swore beneath his breath and pulled the car over. Then he reached across the seat and brushed his thumb over her cheek; until then, she hadn't been aware she was crying. "Trix," he sighed, "it mattered."

"Pick ten strangers and stick them in a room, and ask them which of us they feel sorrier for - you or me - and we all know who they'll choose."

"You're not a bad person because you want to be yourself."

"Maybe you had to come close to losing something before you could remember its value."

"There are so many things I can't believe. That people deserve what they get, both bad and good. That one day I'll live in a world where people are judged by what they do instead of who they are. That happy endings don't have contingencies and conditions."

"But memory is like plaster: peel it back and you just might find a completely different picture."

"I was in the mood to make out in the back row of the movie theater with someone who did not know my first name. I wanted three guys to fight for the honor of buying me a drink."

"Well, sometimes to get what you want the most, you have to do what you want the least."

"But even if every house looked identical-if all the furnishings were the same- it still wouldn't feel like yours.That's because home isn't where you are. It's who you're with."

"The best parenting advice I ever got was from a labor nurse who told me the following:1. After your baby gets here, the dog will just be a dog.2. The terrible twos last through age three.3. Never ask your child an open-ended question, such as "Do you want to go to bed now?" You won't want to hear the answer, believe me. "Do you want me to carry you upstairs, or do you want to walk upstairs to go to bed?" That way, you get the outcome you want and they feel empowered."

"Maybe a mother wasn't what she seemed to be on the surface."

"And just like that, something inside shifted very subtly, so that all the empty spaces in him suddenly disappeared, so that his breath timed to hers, so that his blood sang. This is why there was music, he realized. There were some feelings that just didn't have words big enough to describe them."

"He's an egotistical dickhead who's going to chew you up and spit you out; and you have a really awful history of falling for assholes that you ought to run screaming from; and I don't feel like sitting around listening to you try to convince yourself you don't still feel something for Campbell Alexander when, in fact, you've spent the past fifteen years trying to fill in the hole he made inside you."

"What we all want, really, is to be loved. That craving drives our worst behavior."

"Nowadays, I dont have expectations, and this way she beats them all."

"Is there any place on earth that smells better than a Laundromat? It's like a rainy Sunday when you don't have to get out from under your covers, or like lying back on the grass your father's just mowed--comfort food for your nose."

"Dr. Keller begins pacing. "I don't think we've been hearing Faith just right. Her guard...the words..they sound alike."What do you mean?"Your daughter," Dr. Keller says flatly. "I think she's seeing God."

"People ask all the time how I'm doing, but the truth is, they don't really want to know."

"It was one thing to make a mistake; it was another thing to keep making it. I knew what happened when you let yourself get close to someone, when you started to believe they loved you: you'd be disappointed. Depend on someone, and you might as well admit you're going to be crushed, because when you really needed them, they wouldn't be there. Either that, or you'd confide in them and you added to their problems. All you ever really had was yourself, and that sort of sucked if you were less than reliable."

"Love was that way. You could not render it in black or white. It always came down to the strange, blended shades of grey."

"How come love sounds so violent? You fall head over heels. You're struck by Cupid's arrow. You take the risk of having your heart broken. From an outside perspective, it sounds impossibly painful, not worth the trouble. And yet we do it every day. We keep coming back for more. Why? If it weren't so perilous, maybe we wouldn't crave it so much. Maybe it has to be brutal, in order to work. People come in so many shapes and sizes that it takes a bit of force in order to fit together perfectly. But you know what they say about a break that heals: it's always stronger than before."

"Sometimes I think my whole life has been about holding on to you."

"Was that all it took to be brave? Knowing that someone believed in you?"