“Cookie, you have to stop preemptively ending things before they even start. I know you're afraid of making yourself vulnerable, but if you keep impeding things before they even begin, just out of fear, you'll never know." I'd never know joy. Shit damn. I worried she was right. What if I was snapping into "screw you, your loss" mode too fast? How do you take back, "No you're the one who missed"? Me and my drama trap doors.”

“If you hold back on the emotions - if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them - you can never get to being detached, you're too busy being afraid. You're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief. You're afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails. But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. And only then can you say, "All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment.”

“Maybe one day you'll come back. Maybe you never will and that'll suck, but you can't keep doing this. The blame and the self-loathing and the bullshit. I can't watch that. It makes me hate you for hating yourself. I don't want to lose you. But I'd rather lose you if it means you'll be happy. I think if you come back with me today, you'll never be okay. And I'll never be okay if you aren't. I need to know that there's a way for people like us to end up okay. I need to know that there even is such a thing as okay, maybe even good, and it's out there and we just haven't found it yet. There's got to be a happier ending than this, here. There's got to be a better story. Because we deserve one. You deserve one. Even if it doesn't end with you coming back to me.”

“You're so beautiful," said Alice. "I'm afraid of looking at you and not knowing who you are.""I think that even if you don't know who I am someday, you'll still know that I love you.""What if I see you, and I don't know that you're my daughter, and I don't know that you love me?""Then, I'll tell you that I do, and you'll believe me.”

“Is it better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all...But is it? Is it really better to know a thing you love only to lose it?If I'd known then what I know now...But that's the thing, isn't it? When you're living a thing...you don't know. You take it for granted, like a dog being petted, assuming it will somehow go on forever.If I'd known what I know now...I'd have touched everything in sight, everything I could get my hands on. I'd have grabbed the nearest girl I could find and not even caring how crazy she thought me, touched my hands to her face just to know what that feels like.Is it better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all?I, never having loved before, have no real answer to that question.”

“Remember when we met? Before you left, you said you were going to make a fool of yourself over me. That's still what you're worried about. That you'll find yourself doing things you never dreamed of doing, things you laughed at in others, and you'll make a fool of yourself.”