“Love. The opposite of fear is love, and every minute of every day, we choose between the two.”

“I hadn’t actually come out and asked him to pick us up, so when he said, “All right, give me twenty minutes, I gotta go dig out my old crutches,” I knew with every last drop of blood and every bone in my body that Mike was at least related to Jesus.”

“Already in love with her, huh?” she said. I jerked my eyes away and thought about it. But there it was, that tiny heart space, already spreading out between us, my sister and me.”

“Laura Ingalls Wilder should have been in class with us, too. With friends like us, she never would have had to put up with Nelly Olsens or Jenny Pratts. With friends like us, she never would have had to feel bad about wearing her same dress every single day of her life.”

“I watched her shuffle around, reading tags and smelling flowers, laughing every time or smiling nice—what flowers were supposed to make you do.”

“Love doesn't always mean rings and veils and walks down the aisle.Sometimes love means broken windows and broken hearts,and not being able to fix either. And sometimes love means telling you, there's no such thing as time in Heaven so don't rush to meet me. Stay a while, and pick, girl, the roses.”

“We turned away from each other at the same time, the space between us getting longer, until it looked like we hadn’t even been standing together in the first place. But we had, and it was there: another heart layer on top of that sidewalk, changing it forever.”