Emily Giffin

“Love and friendship. They are what make us who we are, and what can change us, if we let them.”

“Anxiety was not an emotion I could ever remember feeling when I went out in New York, and I wondered why tonight felt so different. Maybe it was because I no longer had a boyfriend or fiance. I suddenly recognized that there was safety in having someone, as well as a lack of pressure to shine. Ironically, this had cultivated a certain free-spiritedness that had, in turn, allowed me to be the life of the party and hoard the affection of additional men....But that had all changed. I didn't have a boyfriend, a perfect figure, or alcohol-induced outrageousness to fall back on.”

“But I have learned that you make your own happiness, that part of going for what you want means losing something else. And when the stakes are high, the losses can be that much greater.”

“Songs and smells will bring you back to a moment in time more than anything else. It's amazing how much can be conjured with a few notes of a song or a solitary whiff of a room. A song you didn't even pay attention to at the time, a place that you didn't even know had a particular smell. I wonder what will someday bring back Dex and our few months together. Maybe the sound of Dido's voice. Maybe the scent of the Aveda shampoo I've been using all summer.”

“His words are like the sound of a needle dragging across a record. A sinking, sickening feeling washes over me. This is why you should never, ever get your hopes up. This is why you should see the glass as half empty. So, when the whole things spills, you aren't as devastated.”

“Nothing is ever perfect. It is what you make of it.”

“I know what I have to say. I think of Hillary's advice, how she has been telling me to say something all along. But I am not doing this for her. This is for me. I formulate the sentences, words that have been ringing in my head all summer."I want to be with you, Dex" I say steadily. "Cancel the wedding. Be with me."There it is. After two months of waiting, a lifetime of passivity, everything is on the line. I feel relieved and liberated and changed. I am a woman who expects happiness. I deserve happiness. Surely he will make me happy.Dex inhales, on the verge of responding."Don't," I say, shaking my head. "Please don't talk to me agian unless it's to tell me that the wedding is off. We have nothing more to discuss until then."Our eyes lock. Neither of us blinks for a minute or more. And then, for the first time, I beat Dex in a staring contest. ”

“Maybe the thing to do after you roll the dice-and lose-is simply pick them up and roll them again.”

“I have one final hope, If I get double sixes, maybe he will change his mind, come back to me. As if to cast a magic spell, I blow on the dice just as Dex did...Just as it happened with our first roll, one die lands before its mate. On a six! I hold my breath. For a brief second, I see a mess of dots, and think I have boxcars again. I kneel, staring at the second die.It is onle a five.I have rolled an eleven, It is as if someone is mocking me, saying, Close, but no dice.”

“When you’re in love, sometimes you have to swallow your pride, and sometimes you have to keep your pride. It’s a balance. But when the relationship is right, you find the balance.”

“I think of how life takes unexpected twists and turns, sometimes through sheer happenstance, sometimes through calculated decisions. In the end, it can all be called fate, but to me, it is more a matter of faith.”

“His loyalty, so fierce and unwavering, makes my eyes water and heart ache.”

“In days that follow, I discover that anger is easier to handle than grief.”

“I think of how each person in a marriage owes it to the other to find individual happiness, even in a shared life. That this is the only way to grow together, instead of apart.”

“I love him wholly and unconditionally and without reservation. I love him enough to sacrifice a friendship. I love him enough to accept my own happiness and use it, in turn, to make him happy back.”

“I feel freer with Dex than I ever did single, I feel more myself with him than without maybe true love does that.”

“Someday being with Dex will be a distant memory. This fact makes me sad too. Its the initial stages of grief that seem to be worst but in some ways, Its sadder as time goes by and you consider how much they're missed in your life.”

“But now we have time. Endless time stretches before us.”

“We are one of those couples i used to watch, thinking to myself that I'd never be on the inside of something so special. I remember reassuring myself that it probably looked nicer than it actually was, I am happy to be wrong about that.”

“I miss us too. I always have and I probably always will. Sometimes there are no happy endings. No matter what, I'll be losing something, someone. But maybe that's what it all comes down to. Love, not as a surge of passion, but as a choice to commit to something, someone, no matter what obstacles or temptations stand in the way. And maybe making that choice again and again, day in and day out, year after year,says more about love than never having a choice to make at all.”

“dangerous chemistry”

“He was uncomplicated and upbeat and easy. At one point, I might have thought these traits made him a simpleton, but now I think they just translate to happiness.”

“You see yourself as very average, ordinary. And there is nothing ordinary about you, Rachel." (Something Borrowed)”

“(mother)" She used to tell me to get my nose out of my book and go get some fresh air.”

“Love as a verb. Love as a commitment. ”

“True love is supposed to make you into a better person-uplift you.”

“No, scratch the word "career." Careers are for people who wish to advance. I only want to survive, draw a paycheck. ”

“And then there is Darcy. She is a woman who believes that things should fall into her lap, and, consequently, they do. They always have. She wins because she expects to win. I do not expect what I want, so I dont. And I dont even try.”

“The world is not that black and white, Rachel. There are no moral absolutes. It is complex.”

“The worst thing about this particular end (of my youth) and the beginning (of middle age) is that for the first time in my life, I realize I don't know where I'm going. My wants are simple: a job that I like and a guy whom I love. And on the eve of my thirteth, I must face that I am 0 for 2.”

“This is why you should never, ever get your hopes up. This is why you should see the glass as half empty. So when the whole thing spills, you aren’t as devastated.”

“How different this moment feels, for so many reasons. I tell myself that no two loves are identical - but that I don't have to compare anymore.”

“Instead of relief or gratitude, more guilt washes over me. Andy's certainly not faultless - no one ever is in a marriage”

“i wish i could freeze this moment, somehow delay my final decision, and just hang here in the balance between two places, two worlds, two loves.”

“When I meet someone I like being with more than I like being alone, I'll marry her.”

“Happiness is the best revenge, you know? Just be happy. It's a choice.”

“And without Dex in my life, I like to think I could have somehow found contentment. But the truth is, I feel freer with Dex than I ever did when I was single. I feel more myself with him than without. Maybe true love does that”

“...love is the sum of our choices, the strength of our commitments, the ties that bind us together.”

“[The] maid of honor - the unambiguous, grown-up equivalent of wearing best friend necklaces.”

“A son is a son 'til he gets a wife, but a daughter is a daughter all her life. ”

“You can love someone you mistrust.”

“Did she ever regret her choices? Were her decisions more clear-cut than mine - or are there always shades of gray whe it comes to matters of the heart?”

“I miss him in so many ways, but right now I miss him in the way you always miss someone when you're single among a room full of couples.”

“You can't quantify love, and if you try, you can end up focusing on misleading factors. Stuff that really has more to do with personality-the fact that some people are simply more expressive or emotional or needy in a relationship. But beyond such smokescreens, the answer is there. Love is seldom-almost never-an even proposition.”

“Maybe that's what it all comes down to. Love, not as a surge of passion, but as a choice to commit to something, someone, no matter what obstacles or temptations stand in the way. And maybe making that choice, again and again, day in and day out, year after year, says more about love than never having a choice to make at all.”

“I think I hoped for something more. Maybe I even hoped that I could find in Richard what I had with Ben. But it is suddenly very clear: Richard is not fallin in love with me and I'm not falling in love with Richard. We are not creating anything permanent or special. We are only having fun together. It is a fling- a fling just like he said last night- a fling with an ending yet to be determined. I feel relieved to have it defined”

“It's like Brad Pitt for us. You might not like blond men with pretty features, but c'mon, it's Brad. You're not going to kick him out of bed for eating crackers.”

“I think the issue of female friendship really resonates well with women, ... So many women have a friend like Darcy or can relate to the feeling of being second-fiddle to a friend.”

“I was in the fifth grade the first time I thought about turning thirty. My best friend Darcy and I came across a perpetual calendar in the back of the phone book, where you could look up any date in the future, and by using this little grid, determine what the day of the week would be. So we located our birthdays in the following year, mine in May and hers in September. I got Wednesday, a school night. She got a Friday. A small victory, but typical. Darcy was always the lucky one. Her skin tanned more quickly, her hair feathered more easily, and she didn't need braces. Her moonwalk was superior, as were her cart-wheels and her front handsprings (I couldn't handspring at all). She had a better sticker collection. More Michael Jackson pins. Forenze sweaters in turquoise, red, and peach (my mother allowed me none- said they were too trendy and expensive). And a pair of fifty-dollar Guess jeans with zippers at the ankles (ditto). Darcy had double-pierced ears and a sibling- even if it was just a brother, it was better than being an only child as I was.But at least I was a few months older and she would never quite catch up. That's when I decided to check out my thirtieth birthday- in a year so far away that it sounded like science fiction. It fell on a Sunday, which meant that my dashing husband and I would secure a responsible baby-sitter for our two (possibly three) children on that Saturday evening, dine at a fancy French restaurant with cloth napkins, and stay out past midnight, so technically we would be celebrating on my actual birthday. I would have just won a big case- somehow proven that an innocent man didn't do it. And my husband would toast me: "To Rachel, my beautiful wife, the mother of my chidren and the finest lawyer in Indy." I shared my fantasy with Darcy as we discovered that her thirtieth birthday fell on a Monday. Bummer for her. I watched her purse her lips as she processed this information."You know, Rachel, who cares what day of the week we turn thirty?" she said, shrugging a smooth, olive shoulder. "We'll be old by then. Birthdays don't matter when you get that old."I thought of my parents, who were in their thirties, and their lackluster approach to their own birthdays. My dad had just given my mom a toaster for her birthday because ours broke the week before. The new one toasted four slices at a time instead of just two. It wasn't much of a gift. But my mom had seemed pleased enough with her new appliance; nowhere did I detect the disappointment that I felt when my Christmas stash didn't quite meet expectations. So Darcy was probably right. Fun stuff like birthdays wouldn't matter as much by the time we reached thirty.The next time I really thought about being thirty was our senior year in high school, when Darcy and I started watching ths show Thirty Something together. It wasn't our favorite- we preferred cheerful sit-coms like Who's the Boss? and Growing Pains- but we watched it anyway. My big problem with Thirty Something was the whiny characters and their depressing issues that they seemed to bring upon themselves. I remember thinking that they should grow up, suck it up. Stop pondering the meaning of life and start making grocery lists. That was back when I thought my teenage years were dragging and my twenties would surealy last forever.Then I reached my twenties. And the early twenties did seem to last forever. When I heard acquaintances a few years older lament the end of their youth, I felt smug, not yet in the danger zone myself. I had plenty of time..”