“Nothing makes you get down on yourself and worry that you’re undesirable like rejection, so having someone desirable desire you is the ultimate antidote.”

“Love is . . . needing to be with this one person. No—it’s more like wanting to need to be with this one person. Last semester my English professor read us this great Robert Frost quotation that went something like, ‘Love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.”

“Whatever age you are when you’re first burned is old enough to lose hope that you’ll ever get excited about anybody else.”

“I remember another thing Cosmo said. It typically takes half the time you’re dating a guy to fall out of love with him. My ex and I were together almost ten months before he admitted over the holidays that he’d fallen out of love with me, so by that measure I should’ve been cured weeks ago. But once you’ve anticipated spending forever with someone, I’m not convinced you can ever feel complete after being uncoupled. I think you just learn to live without the person. Like when someone dies, you don’t stop loving them just because they’re not around to love you back anymore. Breakups truly are a kind of death.”

“Please don’t hate you??!! I hate that I love you. Loving you made me waste a year of my life. Lovingyou made me be passionate about nothing but you. Loving you made me take risks I never would haveotherwise. Loving you made me give it up to you. Loving you made me neglect my parents and Amy.Loving you made me not care that my grandma just died. Loving you made me turn out bitter andhopeless like her. Loving you made me hate myself for being dumped by you. Loving you made medeluded, irrational, inconsiderate, and a liar. And because I love you, you’re always going to haunt me.”

“Ultimately, I have no power over what he or any boy thinks of me.”

“One of the pitfalls of having an ex-boyfriend is that people still pair you together in their memories, and sooner or later someone’s bound to mention him. And now that it has happened . . . I can’t say I feel nothing. I don’t think it’s possible to get royally dumped by the only boy I’ve ever done it with, let alone loved, and then feel nothing when he’s brought up in conversation.”