“True love is supposed to make you into a better person-uplift you.”

“You can't quantify love, and if you try, you can end up focusing on misleading factors. Stuff that really has more to do with personality-the fact that some people are simply more expressive or emotional or needy in a relationship. But beyond such smokescreens, the answer is there. Love is seldom-almost never-an even proposition.”

“There is no better audience for someone in love than someone in love.”

“Don't you wish we could pick thepeople we love?""Yeah," I say. "Or just make the people we love want the same things we want.”

“Because Marian was the love of my life. For a long time. And that's the kind of information you share when you're young and stupid and hoping that you're in something that is going to be even bigger and better than what you once lost. It's the kind of shit you waste your time thinking about. Lemme tell you -- it does no good.”

“I was aware that we were both silently making those inevitable comparisons, putting our relationship in context. She is more this and less that. He is better or worse in these ways. It is human nature to do this--unless its your first relationship, which might be the very reason that your first relationship feels special and remains forever sacred. But the older you get, the more cynical you become, and the more complicated and convoluted the exercise is. You begin to realize that nothing is perfect, that there are trade-offs and sacrifices. The worst is when someone in your past trumps the person in the present, and you think to yourself: if I'd known this, then maybe I wouldn't have let him go.”

“They were all true—and still are—but were better left unsaid, just as I decided never to confess to Andy how close Icame to losing everything. Instead, I hold that day deep within myself, as a reminder that love is the sum of ourchoices, the strength of our commitments, the ties that bind us together.”