I got nineteen years with your mom. But do you think I would've turned down the idea if I'd known I'd only get one year? Or one month?...There's no benchmark for how life's supposed to happen, Perry. There is no ideal world for you to wait around for...
I turned on the water then returned to the door jamb. “That’s not fair, you’re nice and clean.” “I am?” He took a few steps toward me. “Aren’t you?” “No,” he scowled and shook his head. “I’m dirty. But you knew that.” Now,...
She turned to look at him, and he was already looking at her. “I’m going to miss you when I wake up,” she whispered, because she realized that she must have fallen asleep under the sun. Arin was too real for her imagination. He was a dream. “...
Someone was coming through the velvet. He was pulling it wide, he was stepping onto Kestrel’s balcony—close, closer still as she turned and the curtain swayed, then stopped. He pinned the velvet against frame. He held the sweep of it high, at the...
Curiosity can bring guts out of hiding at times, maybe even get them going. But curiosity usually evaporates. Gust have to go for the long haul. Curiosity's like a fun friend you can't really trust. It turns you on and then it leaves you to make it o...
The letter had been crumpled up and tossed onto the grate. It had burned all around the edges, so the names at the top and bottom had gone up in smoke. But there was enough of the bold black scrawl to reveal that it had indeed been a love letter. And...
Will stopped glaring at Gabriel, and turned to Tessa. He looked at her and his face softened: the traces of the wild, broken boy he had been vanished, replaced with the expression often worn by the man he was now, who knew what it was to love and be ...
In those years when their mother disappeared into herself, and old Mrs Jeffrey next door turned into Frannie, their honorary grandmother, Alice also taught herself how to change light bulbs, fix running toilets and cook chops and veggies while Elisab...
Just before he passed behind the hedge at the end of the drive, he turned to look back at Stoke Morrow and caught me spying on him. His shining eyes were so cruel, and before I could close the curtain, I saw the flash of an awful grin on his face. It...
Perhaps there’s no better act of simplification than climbing a mountain. For an afternoon, a day, or a week, it’s a way of reducing a complicated life into a simple goal. All you have to do is take one step at a time, place one foot in front of ...
And I was remembering that time in our lives together, the time of those ritual walks. I was remembering the way it feels at just that moment when you begin to turn, when you’re poised exactly between the things in life you want to do and those you...
I don't tell her that my grasp on truth, on words, on people, has slipped. I was getting close, so close to normal again, and that's been snatched away. I'm not even back where I started. I'm somewhere else entirely, so far off the map I don't know w...
The book exists for us perchance which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered. These same questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their turn occurred to all the...
If you’re not doing what you want to do. However, you still think about it every day. This means you have not given up. Only you know what action will make it happen and thought is an action. Keep focusing on what you want to do and figure out how ...
Sometimes you never feel meaner than the moment you stop being mean. It's like how turning on a light makes you realize how dark the room had gotten. And the way you usually act, the things you would have normally done, are like these ghosts that eve...
At a certain age our parents offhandedly start telling us things we’ve never heard before, about themselves and their families, their upbringing and history. They’re turning their lives into stories, trying to make sense of them in retrospect and...
I'm hoping you end up happily married to the man of your dreams and have a hoard of beautiful kids that'll keep you on your toes by turning your neighbours into various types of pond-life." He then shot her his signature grin. "But if it happens to b...
They say that when one door closes, another opens. Why just one and not many? It stands to reason that if there are two doors there have to be more. Besides doors are doors; they open and close all the time. That is what they’re meant to do. If a d...
Destiny was funny stuff, he knew. You couldn’t trust it. Often you couldn’t even see it. Just when you knew you had it cornered, it turned out to be something else—coincidence, maybe, or providence. You barred the door against it, and it was st...
Just because we don't understand why they'd cover up something doesn't mean they aren't," Bobby said, and we both turned to look at him. "Now you just sound paranoid," I said. "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you," Bobby s...
For readers worldwide, the attraction of romance novels seems to be that they provide hope, strength, and the assurance that happy endings are possible. Romance makes the promise that no matter how bleak things sometimes look, in the end everything w...
