“The most basic and somehow forgettable thing is this: Love is not pain. Love is goodness.”

“Love is ease, love is comfort, love is support and respect. Love is not punishing or controlling. Love lets you grow and breathe. Love's passion is only good passion -- swirling-leaves-on-a-fall-day passion, a-sky-full-of-magnificent-stars passion -- not angst and anxiety. Love is not hurt and harm. Love is never unsafe. Love is sleeping like puzzle pieces. It's your own garden you protect; it's a field of wildflowers you move about in both freely and together.”

“It's shocking the things we call love.”

“You've got to have someone who loves your body. Who doesn't define you, but sees you. Who loves what he sees. Who you don't have to struggle to be good enough for.”

“What’s that about? Love must be more about power than we think, if even in its most intimate moment of expression we think about not being the one who risks the most.”

“A person is never as quiet or unrestrained as they seem, or as bad or good, as vulnerable or as strong, as sweet or as feisty; we are thickly layered, page lying upon page, behind simple covers. And love - it is not the book itself, but the binding. It can rip us apart or hold us together...Layers, by their nature, are fragile things.”

“It took me years to figure out that upset was upset, and tumultuousness was not the same thing as passion. Love isn't drama.”