“It’s true that iffriends can never count on you being there the next timethey need you, the place they leave for you might be verysmall. That’s self-defense. If you abandon people—even if it’snot your fault—they will eventually get over you and findsomeone else. Good for them. But you’re an adult now, andyou can build things as deep and as long-lasting as you wantto. I wish you wouldn’t underestimate your ability to makepeople love you. - Aunt Aja”

“You learned that it was easy frighteningly easy to get lost in someone else's life accommodating him and stop being yourself. You learned to be wary about falling in love. And you learned that someone who loved you could stop loving you for some dark reason and even though that was bruising you were more resilient than you knew. Eventually you would get over it more or less.”

“I love you’ means that I accept you for the person that you are, and that I do not wish to change you into someone else. It means that I will love you and stand by you even through the worst of times. It means loving you even when you’re in a bad mood, or too tired to do the things I want to do. It means loving you when you’re down, not just when you’re fun to be with. ‘I love you’ means that I know your deepest secrets and do not judge you for them, asking in return that you do not judge me for mine. It means that I care enough to fight for what we have and that I love you enough not to let go. It means thinking of you, dreaming of you, wanting and needing you constantly, and hoping you feel the same way for me”

“Humble people were unsettling at best. All that lack of backbone. It was just creepy. Like talking to linguine.”

“How can you leave someone if you let them this deep inside you? It's so much harder that way. Messy. Complicated. No Band-Aids.”

“Love? Love is like holding water in your hands. You might have it for a time, but it escapes, leaving you with nothing.”

“There is, I believe, no such thing as unconditional self-acceptance. Those who say so are promulgating a pernicious lie. One must first live a decent, honorable and productive life. Only then do you get to feel good about yourself.Seeking to heedlessly gratify your desires or impulses of the moment to do things (or fail to do things) your conscience knows to be contrary to your standards of right, worthy and virtuous behavior is, in a mental, emotional and spiritual sense, akin to spending capital that you have not earned, and therefore will eventually cause you to feel very negatively … about who and what you are. You cannot in the long run have your cake and eat it too. The longer … you behave in certain ways, the more it comes to define you, not only to others, but also to yourself.”