“With a cold"--she spoke evenly, lowering her eyes a little--"now is the hardest time. Maybe even harder than dying. But this is probably as bad as it can get. You might come to fear the next time you get a cold; it will be as bad as this, but if you just hold steady, it won't be. For the rest of your life. That's how it works. You could take the negative view and live in fear: Will it happen again? But it won't hurt so much if you just accept it as a part of life." With that she looked up at me, smiling.”

“It is amazing how much you can see in other people - the good and the bad, we won't even talk about the ugly - if you just shut up and watch them.”

“You said you didn't want to get involved with me,that one of us would get hurt and how you couldn't bear it. Well that just isn't good enough..Look what happens to people just living their lives. They get hurt, it's not fair they get hurt but they do, all the time, no matter how careful they are. Somebody can just just come along and hurt them, for no stupid reason..”

“I know you're scared," she said, smoothing an ice cube over her blistering fingers, "but you gotta grab hold of yourself. Every time you give in to your fears, you're lettin' that man win. And every time you do that, he gets stronger while you get weaker. Givin' into your fears will rob you blind. You'll end up a prisoner to that man for the rest of your life.”

“There are many things that can keep you in a relationship. Fear of being alone, Fear of disrupting the arrangement of your life.A decision to settle for something that's okay. Because you don;t know if you can get any better. Or maybe there's the irrational belief that it will get better even if you know he won't change.”

“I think she did really try her hardest to get over him. You would, wouldn't you, if someone had hurt you like that? You'd make all kinds of promises to yourself not to let them do something like that again. But wouldn't a small part of you always be wondering "what if" Wouldn't some part of you - a part that you might not want to exist - still be holding out for that happy ending? It's how we're built isn't it? No matter how many times you get slapped in the face you have to believe that the next time would be different. And then in comes the guy who hurt you all those years ago, and he wants to make things better and to prove he's not all talk- this time it will be different. How could she not fall for that? How could she not think that if she chose him it would finally lift the shadow that he'd cast over her life? All that hurt, all that suffering wouldn't have been for nothing then, would it? If he'd come back to you like that, would you have taken him back?”