I shiver, thinking how easy it is to be totally wrong about people-to see one tiny part of them and confuse it for the whole, to see the cause and think it’s the effect or vice versa.
There is no before. There is only now, and what comes next.
When you love someone, when you care for someone, you have to do it through the good and the bad. Not just when you’re happy and it’s easy.
And you should hear the music. Incredible, amazing music, like nothing you’ve ever heard, music that almost takes your head off, you know? That makes you want to scream and jump up and down and break stuff and cry...
Sometimes I’m afraid to go to sleep because of what I’m leaving behind.
I said, I prefer the ocean when it’s gray. Or not really gray. A pale, in-between color. It reminds me of waiting for something good to happen.
I love you. Remember. They cannot take it.
I’ve been so used to thinking of what the borders are keeping out that I haven’t considered that they’re also penning us in.
He is no longer mine to lose, but the grief is there, a gnawing sense of disbelief.
The deadliest of all deadly things: It kills you both when you have it and when you don’t.
I don’t love you, Lena. Do you hear me? I never love you.
Everything in me feels fluttering and free, like I could take off from the ground at any second. Music, I think, he makes me feel like music.
Music, I think, he makes me feel like music.
The flip side of freedom is this: When you’re completely free, you’re also completely on your own.
Unhappiness is bondage; therefore, happiness is freedom.
I wonder if this is how people always get close: They heal each other’s wounds; they repair the broken skin.
But you can build a future out of anything. A scrap, a flicker. The desire to go forward, slowly, one foot at a time. You can build an airy city out of ruins.
But how could anyone who’s ever seen a summer – big explosion of green and skies lit up electric with splashy sunsets, a riot of flowers and wind that smells like honey – pick the snow?
And then, just at that moment, when I’m no longer sure if I’m dreaming or awake or walking some valley in between where everything you wish for comes true, I feel the flutter of his lips on mine.
The most dangerous sicknesses are those that make us believe we are well.