From the first time we met, we knew everything that mattered about each other, didn’t we? We just knew. I guess that’s what best friends are: parts of each other.
There are always times in life that you don’t fit in. But you have to go forward and make a place for yourself. That’s what growing up is all about. Being strong and believing in yourself-even when you’re most afraid.
To those who are here, those who are gone, and those who are lost.
It isn’t about being at the same school or the same town or even the same room. It’s about being together. Love is a choice you make.
Then he left her there, standing alone, surrounded by word ghosts; things she could have said.
She still felt shell-shocked by all of it, numb. Beneath the numbness, though, was a raw and terrible anger that was unlike anything she’d felt before. She had so little experience with genuine anger that it scared her. She actually worried that if she started screaming, she’d never stop.
He is a man, and he is afraid. This is not a good combination.
Lately he’d been seen going out less and less, becoming that strangest of animals in a small town: a loner.
If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: in love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.
We can’t live other people’s lives for them. Even if we love them.
You couldn’t give up you for them. But what if you wanted them more than you wanted a singular powerful you?
Sometimes holding on was all you could do.
Oh, Mia. You haven’t even begun to find out who you really are, and, believe me, other boys are going to fall in love with you. If a guy can’t see how special you are, he isn’t good enough for you.
Marriages go through hard times. Sometimes you have to get in there and fight for your love. That’s the only way for it to get better.
Jude remembered this pain. Every woman had felt some version of it: the end of first love. It was when you learned, for good and always, that love could be impermanent.
Sometimes you simply made the wrong choice and you had to live with it. You could only change the future.
Some stories don’t have happy endings. Even love stories. Maybe especially love stories.
Goddamn, sometimes it hurt to be free.
The measure of a society is its compassion.
The hallmark of my books is the relationships that define women’s lives.