“Writing a novel is like childbirth: once you realize how awful it really is, you never want to do it again.”

“She said writting novels was like childbirth: if you truly remembered how awful it got, you'd never do it again.”

“Watching them, I thought again of how we can't expect everybody to be there for us, all at once. So it's a lucky thing that really, all you need is someone.”

“It was like when you ripped a piece of paper into two: no matter how you tried, the seams never fit exactly right again.”

“I thought again how you could never really know what you were seeing with just a glance, in motion, passing by. Good or bad, right or wrong. There was always so much more.”

“And so really, you have given me no choice but to take you shopping byforce.” She sighed, then reached up, dropping her sunglasses down fromtheir perch on her head to cover her eyes. “Do you even realize how happythe average teenage girl would be in your shoes? I have a credit card. We’reat the mall. I want to buy you things. It’s like adolescent nirvana.”- Cora”

“It was terrible and awful when someone left you. You could move on, do the best you could, but like Eli had said, an ending was an ending. No matter how many pages of sentences and paragraphs of great stories led up to it, it would always have to have the last word.”