“Life was messy. Always had been and always would be and that was just the way it was, so why bother complaining? You either did something about it or you didn’t, and then you lived with the choice you made.”

“It was a life, she eventually concluded, that had been lived in the middle ground, where contentment and love were found in the smallest details of people’s lives. It was a life of dignity and honor, not without sorrows yet fulfilling in a way that few experiences ever were.”

“Being together isn’t about a honeymoon. It’s about the real you and me. I want to wake up with you beside me in the mornings, I want to spend my evenings looking at you across the dinner table. I want to share every mundane detail of my day with you and hear every detail of yours. I want to laugh with you and fall asleep with you in my arms. Because you aren’t just someone I loved back then. You were my best friend, my best self, and I can’t imagine giving that up again… You might not understand but I gave you the best of me, and after you left nothing was ever the same.. I know you’re afraid, and I’m afraid too. But if we let this go, if we pretend none of this ever happened, then I’m not sure we’ll ever get another chance. We’re still young. We still have time to make this right…We still have the rest of our lives.”

“Everyone wanted to believe that endless love was possible. She’d believed in it once, too, back when she was eighteen…”

“Dawson, like Tuck, was one of those rare people who could love only once, and if anything, separation had only made his feelings grow stronger. Two days ago, that realization had been disconcerting, but she now understood that, for Dawson, there had been no other choice. Love, after all, always said more about those who felt it than it did about the ones they loved.”

“Don’t take my advice. Or anyone’s advice. Trust yourself. For good or for bad, happy or unhappy, it’s your life, and what you do with it has always been entirely up to you.”

“She turned to face him. ‘What were we thinking?’ ‘We weren’t,’ he said. ‘We were in love.’”

“But just like love, fear often arrived when it was least expected. And for her, it visited a second time, arriving with a simple phone call, and she knew with certainty there had never been anything worse.”