Beau, what is it you want?""A porch," he says softly. He says it like it's my name, and right then, I think, what both of us want more than anything is something we can never have. "All I really want is to build a house with a nice, big porch that gets used every day.

She may be a bitch, but she's a genuine bitch with a heart

For a moment we're both silent, staring. I wonder if either of us really sees the other clearly anymore or if we stuck looking at the frozen images of who we used to be.

We both know that pain comes for us all. It's almost a relief. Because if all of us are going to someday lose the people we love most, or be lost by them, then what is there to do but live?

I don't believe in love at first sight but maybe this is as close as it gets: seeing someone, a person you have no business loving, on a football field one night and thinking, I want you to be mine and I want to be yours. Lying on a closet floor with someone and thinking, I shouldn't know you but I do. Recognizing someone as a part of you before they've even become that person in your life, and knowing, without a doubt, that neither of you will ever be who you are in this exact moment ever again and believing, against all odds, you will continue to belong to one another despite that.

Rachel,” I snap, “I don’t care if Janelle wants to work at Hooters. I don’t care if you and the rest of the world want to go spend your money on dried-out chicken and ketchup-based sauces. And least of all—less than almost anything else I can imagine—I don’t care how much sex your sister is or isn’t having. That’s kind of the deal with the whole uptight feminazi thing—we don’t care when other women want to wear stupid orange Soffe shorts with white tennis shoes and have a lot of sex, or when they want to wear habits and live in a convent, or if they want to walk around in pasties and never French kiss, so long as they’re allowed to do what they want. And right now, all I want is to go to bed. Okay?

Just because you don't know what you want yet, it doesn't mean that there's nothing to want.

We may be different, but in this moment we're feeling the exact same thing: the sad kind of bliss where you realize, suddenly, how perfect your life really has been all along. So perfect it hurts, and you could let yourself weep if you wanted. So perfect that even though everything you know is ending, you truly believe life will continue to be beautiful, even—or maybe especially—in those pure moments of loss.

My inheritance is grief and sunlight and the ability to choose which to hold on to.

It’s almost funny, in a tragic way, that the fiery thing at the center of my universe did die and that I, a girl whose name is synonymous with summer, am expected to live without it.

And when you see those good things—and I promise you, there are so many good things—they’re going to be so much brighter for you than they are for other people, just like the abyss always seems deeper and bigger when you stare at it. If you stick it out, it’s all going to feel worth it in the end. Every moment you live, every darkness you face, they’ll all feel worth it when you’re staring light in the face.

When you've been lost as I have," he once said, "you get good at finding your way home.

Maybe we can stay in denial together forever?' I suggest....'No, I mean, maybe there's a town called Denial, and we can literally move there and forget about college.

You're a beautiful and wonderful and sensual and strong golden fawn, she says, followed by That was supposed to say "my best friend," but my phone...