“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.”

“How can you make someone love you when they won't? How long are you supposed to keep trying?”

“Because the difference between a friend and a real friend is that you and the real friend come from the same territory, of the same place deep inside you, and that means you see the world in the same kind of way. You know each other even before you do.”

“When everything gets messy and brutal and complicated, the truth is the first thing to go, isn't it?”

“This is the painful part. Love doesn't leave you. Not all at once. It creeps back in, making you think it can be another way, that it can still be another way, and you have to remind yourself of the reasons that it probably won't be.”

“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”

“And I bet it's harder than people think, isn't it? Everything looks so simple from a distance. Then, the more you look, the more you see. And that's when you have to rise to the challenge.”