“In all honesty Phoebe never actually gave much thought to being Kevin's girlfriend. She fell into their relationship the way others fall asleep at the wheel. She hadn't known guys could be that sweet. Or maybe it hadn't occurred to her before that she might be attracted to someone who didn't treat her like a mild irritant. And he told her he loved her. Moreover, there were tines when she thought she loved Kevin, too. Though what she probably loved even more than Kevin was the idea of someone being in love with her. It seemed like a radical notion. It seemed like the "real thing”

“He was always part of her thoughts, and now that he was real, he was inescapably part of her life, but it was as she had told her mother: saying he was part of her or that they were more than friends sounded like love, but it seemed like loss as well. All the words she knew to describe what he was to her were from love stories and love songs, but those were not words anyone truly meant.”

“If someone loved you -someone decent and kind that is- you had a responsibility not to trample all over her heart. And while he had no intention of hurting Emma, he knew that he could injure her just by not loving her back. Of course, maybe, he did love her back.But then again, maybe she didn't love him in the first place. She hadn't actually said as much. He couldn't very well love someone back if she didn't love him first.He could, however, love her first.And that meant that he was going to have to convince her to love him back.But the question was moot anyway because he hadn't yet decided to love her.Or had he?”

“And now she knew she could never find love in someone else. She knew the lines she treasured so long from the movie were wrong. There was no use searching for love in someone who was born for her. Even if he existed. Love existed in her own self. Inside her. But to comprehend it, to understand it, to awaken it, she needed the other person. Someone who would pull the right strings that made her sing, someone with whom she could share her feelings, her thoughts, her dreams. It was not just someone with whom she could grow old, someone with whom she could share the murmur of the brook.”

“He tried not to love that she could recite scenes from Ghostbusters, that she liked kung fu movies and could name all of the original X-Men— because those seemed like reasons a guy would fall for a girl in a Kevin Smith movie.”

“She could remember a time when she thought things could be right with her and Jack. Now it seemed like that was such a long time ago. How could she have ever told herself things were going to be alright? She now knew with every once of her being that there was absolutely nothing left of the man she had once loved.”