“The nature of love had totally escaped her until now. She had thought that if you lost it, you could never get it back, like a stone thrown down a well. But it was like the water at the bottom of the well, there when you can't even see it, shifting in the dark.”

“You ever put your arms out and spin really, really fast ?Well, that's what loves like. It makes your heart race. It turns the world upside down. But if you're not careful, if you don't keep your eyes on something still, you can lose your balance. You can't see what's happening to the people around you. You can't see your about to fall.”

“I thought that love was a river, endless and deep. I thought it merely happened, washing over you like water. It was nothing to search for, nothing to force. I didn't understand that even when we can't control our fate, we alone have the last say in matters of the heart. We can give it freely, even in the worst of times, even when it isn't returned.”

“You can only know a friend so well after all. When you come right down to it, even your best friend is a puzzle.”

“... hoping that if she just walked down the same street fate would whirl her backward in time until she was once more (fill in your age), when the future was something she had not yet stepped into, when it was just an idea, a moment, something that had not disappointed her yet.”

“I know who you are in your heart,' Andres said. 'That's all that matters.' And that was it. That was the moment. Now I knew how I would feel if I ever lost him. That was how you knew love. My mother had told me that. All you had to do was imagine your life without the other person, and if the thought alone made you shiver, then you knew.”

“Sometimes they'd be there for over an hour, the woman pointing out the catalpa trees, the sparrows, the streetlights,the porch, the little boy repeating the words. They laughed as though everything were a marvel in this rundown neighborhood. All common objects no normal person would bother to take note of, unless she thoughts she'd made a terrible mistake, someone who came back again, hoping that if she walked down the same street fate would whirl her backward in time until she was 17, when the future was not something she had stepped into, when it was just a idea, a moment, something that had not disappointed her yet.”