“You didn't lose everything.""Neither did you.”

“You changed everything. I was so frightened of losing you that I did everything in my power to drive you away. I thought that if I didn't, eventually you would see that you were wasting your time with me and leave anyway.”

“This may be a thing you neither want nor need," she said. "But I'd rather you have it, wishing didn't, than not have it and wish you did.”

“Like her, he didn't buy the Nietzschean line that whatever didn't kill you made you stronger. Sometimes whatever didn't kill you disfigured and debilitated you for the rest of your life instead of killing you. Mere survival was neither here nor there. It was the manner of survival, what you did with whatever it was that didn't kill you.”

“But I didn't really mind it because I knew that ittakes getting everything you ever wanted and then losing it to know whattrue freedom is.”

“If you didn't love him, this never would have happened. But you did. And accepting that love and everything that followed it is part of letting it go.”