“Sometimes you’re loved because of your weaknesses. What you can’t do is sometimes more compelling than what you can.”

“It doesn't work like that," she said, and I was hoping she would tell me how it did work.Maybe she could see that, because she went on. "Sometimes you're loved because of your weaknesses," she said. "What you can't do is sometimes more compelling than what you can.”

“He never told me that he loved me." "Some men don't," she says. "Some men say it all the time and don't mean it."I recognize myself in the latter category, not with Demetri but with one of his predecessors. I sometimes said "I love you" to Josh because I was afraid I didn't; toward the end, I hardly said it at all, and when I did I meant, I WISH I LOVED YOU.”

“You don't need a reason to forgive... If you want to go on with someone, that is what you do. ”

“He gives me a kiss that barely touches my lips – it means nothing or everything. After he’s gone, I think, Happy birthday to me.Jack says, ‘That was the guy?’‘That was him.’Jake shakes his head.‘What?’‘He’s not for you,’ he says.I say, ‘How do you know?’ but what I mean is, How do you know?‘He’s like Ashley Wilkes,’ he says. ‘Any one of these guys is Rhett-ier than he is.’Again, I ask my benignly inflected, ‘How do you know?’‘How do I know?’ he says, tackling me into a bear hug. ‘How do I know? I know, that’s how I know.”

“I remembered my father's speech about what Jack was capable of and wasn't; he'd said, IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH HOW MUCH JACK LOVES YOU. I thought about all the girls he'd stopped loving; it was like he had a timer, and at a certain point it buzzed.”

“Up until that moment, I'd been at the earliest stage of love, when you feel it will turn you into the better person you want to be. Now, his gentle voice and sage advice took me to a later stage: I felt I needed to pretend to be a better person than I was so he'd keep loving me. This was hard because it made me hate him.”