“Love is hard. It's forgiving your best friend when you want to shove her away.”

“I don’t want to be your God damn friend”

“You run away for freedom. You run away because you can’t be trapped by the people who love you but don’t understand you. You run away because you want to be missed, you want them to start a worried search party combing far and wide for any scrap of evidence that you’re going to be back, safe and sound. Running away is a way to play a dirty trick on the perfect fate that will suffocate you if you’re not careful.”

“That I love her, that I want her, that I'm never going anywhere, that she and I are going to last. That this is real. That it’s forever.”

“I wanted this to be easy. I wanted to know for sure who I loved and why. I wanted to be in love without a hint of doubt.But I realised that I could want as hard as I liked; the reality was already messier than I liked. I was in over my head … and I had a panicked feeling that I wasn’t going to be able to manoeuvre this without screwing up big time.”

“Not exactly what I wanted, but you know what they say about getting what you want.""That you should want what you have instead?" I guessed."No! That's ridiculous advice. Jesus, who told you that? Never mind, don't even answer that. Just forget you ever heard it. They, and by 'they' I am referring to those who know what the hell they're talking about, say that you can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes..." He held out his hand for me to finish."You just might get what you need?"He shucked me under the chin and gave me his best cocky smile. "There's hope for you yet."He walked away from me with a determined swagger and didn't look back.”

“To hold you. To smell your hair and hope you don’t notice and think I’m some sort of psychotic. To watch the way the light moves over your skin. I want you to get chilly and sleepy and need to press your body tight to mine, and I want to wrap my arms around you. I want whatever you write in that secret book of yours about me to be worth all the other rotten shit you’re going to wind up accepting down the line.”