Maybe we all just wanted someone to believe in. That's all each of us wanted, and it should be so simple, but it never was simple.

It made me wonder how many times we forgive just because we don't want to lose someone, even if they don't deserve our forgiveness.

Becoming a YA author was actually a very lucky accident. When I wrote the 'Queen of Everything,' I thought it was a book for adults.

Sometimes you're sure dogs have some secret, superior intelligence, and other times you know they're only their simple, goofy selves.

Sometimes I’ve even wished there was a human pause button, where you could choose some point in your life where you could stay always.

Love can come when you're already who you are, when you're filled with you. Not when you look to someone else to fill the empty space.

Hundreds,' Joe says. 'Hundreds and hundreds. But then again, I'm old.' So old, Jesus was in your math class,' I say. I crack myself up.

Darkness does this. It finds all the places you are hiding in. It finds all the things you are holding onto tightly and makes you let go.

I shouldn't have to be a liar to make someone love me. I shouldn't be so afraid of losing someone that I'll do anything to make them stay.

I mean it’s purposeful, even if we don’t realize it. The desire to put things in our path, to figure out how to finally leave the behind….

I felt a constant, low-flying desperation, the kind you feel when you are trying, trying, trying to get something you will never, ever get.

Maybe a person's world can grow bigger in all the right ways, not too wide that it becomes shallow, just large enough to preserve its depth.

I thought I might cry, the way you do when someone gives you some kindness when you most need it but when it seems the most surprising thing.

Empathy took the edge off, and the truth is, we need our edge. Our edge is trying to speak to us, and we are too, too good at shutting it up.

I may be nervous," I say. "Okay, I'm really glad you said that, because I just went to the back room to put on more deodorant." Sebastian says.

The most basic and somehow forgettable thing is this: Love is not pain. Love is goodness. And real love--it's less shiny than solid and simple.

I think a setting is hugely important. I look at setting as a character with its own look, sound, history, quirks, goofy temperaments and moods.

Bliss is the ocean, a towel on the sand, the sun out, the chance to swim in waves or walk dragging a stick behind you, a good book, a cold drink.

Funny the only two times we use the phrase "seeing someone" are when we are referring to being in a a relationship or getting psychological help.

She'd be one of those parents who left a kid behind at a rest stop, driving for miles before she noticed. We'd hear about her on the evening news.

Supposedly there's an actual, researched link between extreme creativity and mental illness, and I believe it because I've seen it with my own eyes.

Marriage is like a well-built porch. If one of the two posts leans too much, the porch collapses. So each must be strong enough to stand on its own.

It can be exhausting eating a meal cooked by a man. With a woman, it's, Ho hum, pass the beans. A guy, you have to act like he just built the Taj Mahal.

Maybe we all just want to feel special, even for a little while, to be fooled for a bit into feeling something besides the truth of our own ordinariness.

Love seems to be something to approach with caution, as if you'd come across a wrapped box in the middle of the street and have no idea what it contains.

If you think about becoming a writer, that's just really one of the big dreams I had. It's really important to have those dreams and pursue your passions.

A lady I will be, but a man's accessory, his handbag, no thank you. I will not be someone's ornament. I will not just be someone's honey, baby, sweetheart.

I've wished for things and never really had the chance...It's time to stop dreaming and do something about it. You've got to know what you want, then...go.

...we are all a volume on the shelf of the... library, a story unto ourselves, never possibly described with one word or even very accurately with thousands.

Stories took twists and turns down fairy-tale paths or down very human everyday ones. You think you’re at the end of the book, and it’s only the end of a chapter.

You've got to have someone who loves your body. Who doesn't define you, but sees you. Who loves what he sees. Who you don't have to struggle to be good enough for.

I don’t know why we insist on pain when pain is so often easy to eliminate. It’s funny the ways we try to punish ourselves when we feel we’ve committed some crime.

I finally learned that it was all right to say something wasn’t working for me when it wasn’t working. The world doesn’t come crashing down when you speak the truth.

This was what happened after you'd been together with someone a long time. You loved that it was old and worn and comfy, but sometimes it was old and worn and comfy.

What’s that about? Love must be more about power than we think, if even in its most intimate moment of expression we think about not being the one who risks the most.

I kept trying to talk myself out of my second thoughts when they were trying to help me. My advice? When it comes to relationships, second thoughts should be promoted.

The world was large, so large. Bigger than it had been before. Family, too, a bigger word. That felt like a good thing. An essential thing. There was power in numbers.

...wanting things for the wrong reasons can turn anyone's life into a marshmallow on a stick over a hot fire: impossibly messy and eventually consumed, one way or another.

If letting go, if letting people and things work themselves out in the way that they needed to without your help was the most important thing, then it was also the hardest.

Most people, it seems like they've only got one part of the equation down. Caring for themselves, or caring for someone else. And I'v learned how important it is to have both.

'The Nature of Jade' is about a girl who works with the elephants at the zoo near her home, and who, through her involvement with them, becomes involved with a boy and his baby.

Accents are funny in that they have this odd draw for us, yet we forget we have one, too. No one is without an accent, but the one you’ve got seems like oatmeal to their caviar.

There are so many different fifteens. And eighteens. And forty-twos, for that matter. Mature fifteens and young fifteens and wise fifteens and lost fifteens. And angry fifteens.

so what brings you to the doctor today?" "hmm, im afraid i have the chronic desire to save people" "i know about that. i've got it too. maybe it's catching." "not catching enough

I always say that, for me, writing a book is like a wacky Greyhound bus trip - I know where I'm starting and where I'll end up, but I have no idea what will happen along the way.

I'd always thought telling the truth to other people was hard, but maybe that was a snap compared to telling the truth to yourself. Sometimes we just refused to know what we knew.

Writers are troubled about finding time to write and writer's block and publicizing books that aren't books yet. They agonize over how to write and what to write and what not to write.

If you look up "charming" in the dictionary, you'll see that it not only has references to strong attraction, but to spells and magic. Then again, what are liars if not great magicians?

The most insane things can become normal if you have them around you long enough. A mind can’t seem to hold anything too crazy for too long without finding a way to make it seem normal.

It's good to let God pick a man for you. We don't do so well when we pick them ourselves. They end up lipsticks in a drawer, all those wrong colors you thought looked so good in the package.

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