“Hadley knows this isn’t some Disney movie. Her parents aren’t ever getting back together”

“Now Hadley presses her forehead against the window of the taxi and once again finds herself smiling at the thought of him. He's like a song she can't get out of her head. Hard as she tries, the melody of their meeting runs through her mind on an endless loop, each time as surprisingly sweet as the last, like a lullaby, like a hymn, and she doesn't think she could ever get tired of hearing it.”

“Hadley didn't know it was possible to miss someone who's only a few feet away, but there it is.”

“You know what they say," Dad said. "If you love something set it free.""What if he doesn't come back?""Something do, somethings don't," he said, reaching to tweak her nose. "I'll always come back to you anyway.""You don't light up," Hadley said, but Dad only smiled."I do when I'm with you.”

“Hadley realises that even though everything else is different, even though there's still an ocean between them, nothing really important has changed at all.He's still her dad. The rest is just geography.”

“But Hadley understood. It wasn't that she was meant to read them all. Maybe someday she would, but for now, it was more the gesture itself. He was giving her the most important thing he could, the only way he knew how. He was a professor, a lover of stories, and he was building her a library in the same way other men might build their daughters houses.”

“Someone once told her there's a formula for how long it takes to get over someone, that it's half as long as the time you've been together.”