"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, her voice flat. "Which, you know, gives you that much more in common. Diseases, genetics, hair, and eye color. It's like they're part of your blueprint. If something's wrong with you, you can usually trace it back to them."I nodded and kept writing."But," she said, "even though you're stuck with them, at the same time, they're also stuck with you. So that's why they always get the front rows at christenings and funerals. Because they're the ones that are there, you know, from the beginning to the end. Like it or not."

"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 both? Who says you have to be either smart or pretty, or into girly stuff or sports? Life shouldn't be about the either/or. We're capable of more than that, you know?"

"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."

"But it's important to acknowledge that while we may make mistakes, in the long run, we may also learn from them."

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

"I can still see Boo sitting there on the floor, cross-legged, holding my Ken and watching my face as she tried to make me see that between my mother'sPTA and Boo's strange ways there was a middle ground that began here with my Barbie, Sab-rina,and led right to me."She can be anything," Boo told me, and this is what I remember most, her freckled face so solemn, as if she knew she was the first to tell me. "And so can you."

"That first love. And the first one who breaks your heart. For me, they just happen to be the same person."

"If something doesn't work exactly right, or maybe needs some special treatment, you don't just throw it away. Everything can't be fully operational all the time. Sometimes, we need to have the patience to give something the little nudge it needs."

"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 piece of paper into two: no matter how you tried, the seams never fit exactly right again. It was what you couldn't see, those tiniest of pieces, that were lost in the severing, and their absence kept everything from being complete."

"You get what you give, but also what you're willing to take."

"A united front announcing a split."

"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. Out, you were out."

"It's a lot easier to be lost than found."

"Why should I even bother? What's the point, really?"He thought for a moment. "Who says there has to be a point?" he asked. "Or a reason. Maybe it's just something you have to do."

"I don't get it,' Caroline said, bemused. 'She's the only one with wings. Why is that?'There were so many questions in life. You couldn't ever have all the answers. But I knew this one.It's so she can fly,' I said. Then I started to run."

"I didn't pretend to know Eli at all, but even so, I'd noticed that his manner was slightly hard to read. It was something in the way he talked that made it difficult to tell whether he was kidding or serious or what. This bothered me. Or intrigued me. Or both."

"Best Friends. And I thought of what she had done all the millions of times I cried to her, collapsing at even the slightest wounding of my heart or pride. So I reached over and pulled her to me, wrapping my arms around her, and held my best friend close, returning so many favors all at once...."

"We were there, together, and in the next room I could hear that monitor beeping. Keeping track of another heart's beat and giving enduring, solid proof of our own."

"When's something difficult to come by, you'll do that much more to make sure it's even harder- if not impossible- to lose."

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

"Love is so unpredictable. That's what makes it so great."

"You want to take me to a movie?" I asked. "Well, not really," he said. "What I really want is for you to be my girlfriend. But I thought saying that might scare you off."

"As long as I didn't say it aloud, it wasn't real."

"Love is needing someone. Love is putting up with someone's bad qualities because they somehow complete you."

"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."

"I'd still thought that everything I thought about that night-the shame, the fear-would fade in time. But that hadn't happened. Instead, the things that I remembered, these little details, seemed to grow stronger, to the point where I could feel their weight in my chest. Nothing, however stuck with me more than the memory of stepping into that dark room and what I found there, and how the light then took that nightmare and made it real."

"What was it like to be so confident even in your failings that you weren't the least bit bothered when other people pointed them out? I was almost envious."

"As I rolled over, stretching out, my only thought was to go back to the dream I'd been having, which I couldn't remember, other than that it had been good, in that distant, hopeful way unreal things can be."

"Family isnt about blood relationships, its about the meaning behind them. I relize now that sharing chromosoms is not the only way to having a family, its about the friendship behind it."

"I knew from experience that no matter how much you turn things in your head, trying to make sense of them, some people just defy all logic."

"Once you love something, you always love it in someway. You have to. it's like, part of you for good."

"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."

"Home wasn't a set house, or a single town on a map. It was wherever the people who loved you were, whenever you were together. Not a place, but a moment, and then another, building on each other like bricks to create a solid shelter that you take with you for your entire life, wherever you may go."

"The truth about forever is that it is happening right now."

"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? There have to be a few holes in the road. It's how life is."

"Grief can be a burden, but also an anchor. You get used to the weight, how it holds you in place."

"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 language of laughter and silliness and girls that was, somehow, friendship."

"I put my pen to the paper and began to write. I'd made so many wishes for so many couples quietly in my head as they drove away, but writing the words out made it seem more real, possible. For them, and maybe for me.FOR YOU, I WISH FOR SECOND CHANCES.I folded it shut, then put it on the wall before I could change my mind, right above Jilly's. As Michael Salem called out to her and she started his way, I crossed the backyard, moving toward the music. When I looked back at the wish wall from a distance, it was a sea of squares: I couldn't even find mine among them. So many things we ask for, hope for, prayers put out into a world so wide: there was no way they could all be answered. But you had to keep asking. If you didn't, nothing even had a chance of coming true."

"All I'd ever thought I wanted was to be left alone. Until I was."

"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 these small differences. And that's the key. It's like a big pie chart, and the love in a relationship has to be the biggest piece. Love can make up for a lot."

"Earlier in the summer, I'd found the syllabi to a couple of the courses I was taking at Defriese in the fall, and I'd hunted down a few of the texts at the U bookstore, figuring it couldn't hurt to acquaint myself with the material."

"Despite my dad's assurances I was strangely nervous my stomach tight ever since we'd hung up. Maybe Deb had picked up on this and it was why she'd pretty much talked nonstop since I'd approached her and asked for a ride. I'd barely had time to explain the situation before she had launched into a dozen stories to illustrate the point that Things Happened But People Were Okay in the End."

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

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

"I like flaws. I think they make things interesting."

"School was my solace, and studying let me escape, allowing me to live a thousand vicarious lives."

"I realized how truly hard it was, really, to see someone you love change right before your eyes. Not only is it scary, it throws your balance off as well."

"Rogerson," I asked him sweetly as we sat watching a video in the pool house, "where would I find the pelagic zone?""In the open sea," he said. "Now shut up and eat your Junior Mints."

"The point,' Ms. Conyers continued, "is that no word had one specific definition. Maybe in the dictionary, but not in real life."

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