“My mother is a firm believer in the long pause, useful in interrogations, proclamations of truth, and the occasional cutting dead of someone without their knowing it.”

“I’ll tell you something, Harpy,” he said, his voice almost a whisper now. “It never even occurred to me that we wouldn’t make it. And it never occurred to you that we would. You were just waiting for us to go down in flames. I thought we could get through anything.”

“You don’t know when you’re twenty-three.You don’t know what it really means to crawl into someone else’s life and stay there. You can’t see all the ways you’re going to get tangled, how you’re going to bond skin to skin. How the idea of separating will feel in five years, in ten – in fifteen. When Georgie thought about divorce now, she imagined lying side by side with Neal on two operating tables while a team of doctors tried to unthread their vascular systems.She didn’t know at twenty-three.”

“When you loved someone and had to let them go, there will always be that small part of yourself that whispers, “What was it that you wanted and why didn’t you fight for it?”

“You asked why I couldn’t forgive you,” Nick said, very quietly, and I jumped a little. “It was because you were the love of my life, Harper. And you didn’t want to be. That’s hard to let go.”

“I love you. I hate you. I like you. I hate you. I love you. I think you’re stupid. I think you’re a loser. I think you’re wonderful. I want to be with you. I don’t want to be with you. I would never date you. I hate you. I love you…..I think the madness started the moment we met and you shook my hand. Did you have a disease or something?”

“Every woman that finally figured out her worth, has picked up her suitcases of pride and boarded a flight to freedom, which landed in the valley of change.”

“If you spend your time hoping someone will suffer the consequences for what they did to your heart, then you’re allowing them to hurt you a second time in your mind.”