“But memory is like plaster: peel it back and you just might find a completely different picture.”

“Memory is like plaster: peel it back and you just might find a completely different picture.”

“But there is a different between mending someone who's broken and finding someone who makes you complete.”

“When feeling came back, in a storm of color and force and sensation, the most you could do was hold on to the person beside you and hope you could weather it. Alex closed her eyes and expected the worst-but it wasn't a bad thing; it was just a different thing. A messier one, more complicated one. She hesitated, and then she kissed Patrick back, willing to concede that you might have to lose control before you could find what you'd been missing.”

“It never failed to amaze Alex how, with the brush of a hand, thetrack of someone’s life might veer in a completely different direction.”

“The scenery you see when you're driving in a car is completely different from the scenery you'd see if you walked the same stretch of road. In the car you might see splashes of color; by foot, you'd realize they are butterflies.”

“What I mean is that those thoughts, they're human. And just because you turn out differently than everyone's imagined you would doesn't mean that you've failed in some way. A kid who gets teased in one school might move to a different one, and be the most popular girl there, just because no one has any other expectations of her. Or a person who goes to med school because his entire family is full of doctors might find out that what he really wants to be is an artist instead.”