“Give me a blank canvas, and I will give you the world.”

“And, honestly, if I can give you one teeny, tiny piece of advice, it is this: DO NOT DATE A BOY IN A BAND!But if you insist on blithely ignoring the above wisdom, DO NOT GIVE HIM YOUR BELOVED STRYPER SHIRT. You will never see it again. Trust me. I had to learn the hard way. (And hell yes, it still hurts, but it does get better.)”

“And I know I'm sarcastic and defensive and I make a joke out of everything and am highly resistant to anything that reeks of sentimental corniness, but I'm giving you my heart anyway because being with you feels like home, and I know you won't break it.”

“I believe that suffering is part of the narrative, and that nothing really good gets built when everything's easy. I believe that loss and emptiness and confusion often give way to new fullness and wisdom.”

“It's not hard to decide what you want your life to be about. What's hard, she said, is figuring out what you're willing to give up in order to do the things you really care about.”

“Use what you have, use what the world gives you. Use the first day of fall: bright flame before winter's deadness; harvest; orange, gold, amber; cool nights and the smell of fire. Our tree-lined streets are set ablaze, our kitchens filled with the smells of nostalgia: apples bubbling into sauce, roasting squash, cinnamon, nutmeg, cider, warmth itself. The leaves as they spark into wild color just before they die are the world's oldest performance art, and everything we see is celebrating one last violently hued hurrah before the black and white silence of winter.”

“Life sneaks up on us every once in a while and gives us something we didn't ever know we wanted, and lights within us a love we didn't even know existed.”