“Given anything negative or uncertain, there were rules that had to be followed.”

“love doesn't follow the rules... nothing is worth having so much as something unattainable.”

“Someone who was happywould have little need to hope for change. But, conversely, an optimistic person was that waybecause he wanted to believe in something better than his reality.He started wondering if there were exceptions to the rule: if happy people might be hopeful, if theunhappy might have given up any anticipation that things might get better.”

“He smiles at me, and I am suddenly seventeen again - the year I realize that love doesn't follow the rules, the year I understood that nothing is worth having so much as something unattainable”

“I would have given anything to keep her little. They outgrow us so much faster than we outgrow them.Brian Fitzgerald, talking about his children.”

“They were different places in that same relationship, and like anything that's out of alignment, they were destined to crash sooner or later.”

“She believed that unadulterated devotion had its share of protective power, as if love were a steel grinder that Fates could not snip through. She also believed that the moment you relaxed your guard, the moment you were anything less than ferocious in your keeping, that was the moment it could all be snatched away.”