"She puts her hands on either side of my face, and the room falls away. I have never gotten so lost in a kiss before. And then, the space between us explodes. My heart keeps missing beats and my hands cannot bring her close enough to me. I taste her and realize I have been starving. I have loved before, but it didn't feel like this.
I think you're the only person who gets me. When I'm with you, the world doesn't feel like a problem I can't figure out. Please come to the dance, because you're my music.
Life, it turns out, goes on. There is no cosmic rule that grants you immunity from the details just because you have come face-to-face with a catastrophe. The garbage can still overflow, the bills arrive in the mail, telemarketers, interrupt dinner.
When feeling came back, in a storm of color and force and sensation, the most you could do was hold on to the person beside you and hope you could weather it. Alex closed her eyes and expected the worst-but it wasn't a bad thing; it was just a different thing. A messier one, more complicated one. She hesitated, and then she kissed Patrick back, willing to concede that you might have to lose control before you could find what you'd been missing.
It's the child who's supposed to cry, and the mom who makes it all better, not the other way around, which is why mothers will move heaven and earth to hold it together in front of their own kids.
You know, he told me once, completely exasperated, you've got one glass of water inside your head, with all the tears for a lifetime. If you waste them over nothing, then you won't be able to cry for real when you need to.
[There's a] point where you have to leave the dough alone. It's silly to anthropomorphize bread, but I love the fact that it needs to sit quietly, to retreat from touch and noise and drama, in order to evolve. I have to admit, I often feel that way myself.
Cara: I used to believe everything my brother told me, because he was older and I figured he knew more about the world. But as it turns out, being a grown-up doesn't mean you're fearless. It just means you fear different things.
"All the world's a stage, but actors aren't the only ones who play roles. Even when you're not following a script, you might as well be. You don't behave the same way in front of everyone. You know what makes your friends laugh, and what makes your parents proud, and what makes your teachers respect you - and you have a different persona for each of them.
There are all sorts of losses people suffer- from the small to the large. You can lose your car keys, your glasses, your virginity. You can lose your head, you can lose your heart, you can lose your mind. You can relinquish your home to move into assisted living, or have a child move overseas, or see a spouse vanish into dementia. Loss is more than just death, and grief is the gray shape-shifter of emotion.
My biggest hope for Jacob is that moments like this won't happen. My biggest fear: that they will, and I won't always be there to keep people from thinking the worst of him.
...courage wasn't something you were bequeathed at birth, and it wasn't a lack of fright. It was overcoming your fear, because the ones you love mattered more.
You want to hear something really sad?' I whisper. 'You're my best friend.' 'You're right. That is really sad.' Oliver grins. 'That's not what I meant.' 'Are we still playing True Confessions?' he asks. 'Is that what we're doing?' He reaches toward me and rubs a strand of my hair between his fingers. 'I think you're beautiful,' Oliver says. 'Inside and out.' He leans forward from the tiniest bit and breathes in, closing his eyes, before he lets the hair fall back against my cheek. I feel it inside me, as if I've been shocked. I don't pull away. I don't want to pull away. 'I... I don't know what to say,' I stammer. Oliver's eyes light up. 'Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walk into mine,' he quotes. He moves slowly, so that I know what's coming, and kisses me.