Morgan Matson

“What happened?" I asked. "What did you say?"Roger put the key in the ignition and looked over at me. "I told her good-bye," he said. Then he started the car and put in in gear, and we headed out.”

“That's us," I said smiling brightly. "The Udells." That seemed to wake Roger up a little, and he blinked at me, surprised."Finally," the clerk muttered. "All right. Names?" he asked, fingers posed over his keyboard."Oh," I said, "Well. That's... Edmund. And I'm Hillary." Roger glanced over at me, a little more sharply, and I tried to shrug as subtly as possible.”

“He told me that if you yelled out "JAMBA!" at full volume, all the employees would yell back "JUICE!" He lied.”

“Amy Curry," I could still hear him intoning, "never end a sentence with a preposition!" Irked that after six years he was still mentally correcting me, I told the Mr. Collins in my head to off fuck.”

“I'd always hated any kind of peanut butter candy. Peanut butter, in my opinion, belonged in sandwiches and nowhere else.”

“I'm not worried about your making friends, having fun, learning, or making your mark on the world. The only thing that I'm a little worried about is your heart.”

“It will be scary. But I know you can do it. Know that I'll be with you, if there's any way that I can manage it. And know that I have always -and will, for always- love you.”

“And we were kissing like drowning people breathe-- like suddenly we'd discovered something that has never been so sweet before that moment.”

“Something tells me we're not in Kansas anymore""You did not just say that”

“I wasn't sure what would happen with us. I knew that there were no guarantees. Terrible things happened when you were least expecting them, on sunny Saturday mornings, and the consequences just had to be lived with, every day. But it seemed that wonderful things could happen too. You could be forced to take a trip, not knowing who you would meet. Not knowing that it would change your life.”

“The feeling that I was about to do something without being sure of the outcome. The feeling of just jumping off something and hoping that the ground would be there when I landed. - Amy”

“She’s been trying to escape since she was little. The thing I don’t think she’s realized is that eventually you have to stop. And what happens when you do?”

“There sometimes isn’t much difference between a knight’s quest and a fool’s errand. - Drew”

“If you don’t feel great on the inside, just look great on the outside, and after a while you won’t be able to tell the difference. - Bronwyn”

“I’d just always assumed those constants, so basic, would never change. I hadn’t even realized they were anything special at the time. And now I would have given anything to be back there again. - Amy”

“Knowing that each breath was another moment he was still here and, simultaneously, that meant that he had just moved a little closer to being gone.”

“Daddy," I whispered, feeling my own breath hitch in my throat. "I love you."Just when I was sure he was asleep, the one corner of his mouth lifted in a smile. "I knew that," he murmured. "Always knew that.”

“maybe Lucy was wrong - maybe sometimes there was such a thing as perfect moment.”

“Just because you'd left something behind didn't mean that it had gone anywhere.”

“(And believe me, you don't want me to be unhappy. I may be looking into the haunting thing right now.)”

“She seemed to still be completely unaware that Elliot was pining openly for her and messing up customers' orders as a result. And the one time I'd tried to hint to her that there might be dating prospects with someone she already knew, someone she was friends with, she'd thought I was trying to set her up with Warren, and things had briefly gotten very uncomfortable.”

“I kept thinking back to all those nights in Connecticut, when I was out the door as soon as dinner was over, yelling my plans behind me as I headed to my car, ready for my real night to begin—my time with my family just something to get through as quickly as possible. And now that I knew that the time we had together was limited, I was holding on to it, trying to stretch it out, all the while wishing I’d appreciated what I’d had earlier.”

“life is sad.......when you are living it alone.”

“I wondered how anyone could have been so sure about a concept so tenuous and impossible as always that they'd be willing to carve it into a tabletop.”

“But nothing lasts forever," Drew said, and then he and Roger sang together "Even cold November rain." I looked from one to the other, baffled."Seriously?" asked Drew, catching my expression in the rear-view mirror. "Magellan, get this girl some GNR.”

“I'm so sorry-I broke you moose?”

“A thousand moments that I had just taken for granted- mostly because I had assumed that there would be a thousand more.”

“It was like bringing them a little bit of the world that was going on without them.”

“I leaned closer to look at it, at all those empty squares that represented the days of summer ahead.”

“Then, completely unbidden, a series of images flashed through my mind. Roger drumming on the steering wheel. Roger sleeping next to me in bed, the blanket falling of his shoulder. Watching me carefully as we drove through a rain-soaked Kansas night, asking me to talk to him. Offering me the last french fry.”

“I looked away from his direct gaze and down at the scratched surface of the table. Someone had etched into it RYAN LOVES MEGAN ALWAYS...I wondered who Ryan and Megan were. And if, wherever they were, they'd made it. I wondered how anyone could have been so sure about a concept so tenuous and impossible as 'always' that they'd be willing to carve it into a tabletop.”

“If you have a gift for something, it's wrong not to work at it!”

“But one thing that I was learning about what happened when you stuck around—it usually seemed that other people were willing to stick by you as well.”

“And I’ve realized that the Beatles got it wrong. Love isn’t all we need—love is all there is.”

“The thing is that people only get hurt—really hurt—when they’re trying to play it safe. That’s when people get injured, when they pull back at the last second because they’re scared. They hurt themselves and other people.”

“You said you didn’t want to waste your time on people who aren’t going to matter,” I said, and he nodded. “But how do you know they’re not going to matter? Unless you give it a shot?”

“Looking at it, I got, for the first time, why people would bring flowers to sick people, stuck inside the hospital with no way to get outside. It was like bringing them a little bit of the world that was going on without them.”

“In all the medical dramas I’d ever seen, there was always some solution, some last-minute, miraculously undiscovered remedy. Nobody ever just gave up on a patient. But it seemed like in real life, they did.”

“There was no In-N-Out in Connecticut, because clearly that state was an inhospitable wasteland.”

“There weren‘t enough tears to cry.”

“A man on a quest. A Don Quixote searching for his Dulcinea. But keep in mind my good friend, Don Quixote never found his Dulcinea, did he? He did not. There sometimes isn’t much difference between a knight’s quest and a fool’s errand.”

“Ad astra per aspera, to the stars through adversity”

“Hey," he said smiling at me pulling off his sunglasses. "Did you get me something good?" "I think so," I said trying to ignore how hard my heart was beating. Then before I could think about it or analyze or consider what I was doing I leaned over and kissed him.”

“there was something about being alone in places that were usually filled with people that made them seem particularly empty when it was just you.”

“I’d found out that when you’re never going to see someone again, it’s not the good-bye that matters. What matters is that you’re never going to be able to say anything else to them, and you’re left with an eternal unfinished conversation.”

“I think there are lots of things still to be discovered. You just have to be paying attention.”

“I loved the idea that people could discover things. That you could be the person to see something first. Or see something that nobody else had been able to.”

“If you like everything, that’s basically just saying that you don’t really like anything.”

“I’d always loved the chance to become someone else for a few hours. Someone for whom the words had been written, every gesture and emotion plotted, and the ending figured out. Almost like life. Just without the surprises.”

“I made it to the sidewalk and took off Bronwyn's shoes, looping the heel straps over my wrists. The stars above were beautiful, the sky was amazingly clear, and I could smell the fire faintly, but I barely registered any of it”