Being heartbroken doesn’t mean you stop feeling. Just the opposite — it means you feel it all more. With your heart in fragments, every sensation is sharper, every emotion more acute. Your feelings are enhanced, like a blind man with an impeccable sense of smell, or a deaf woman whose eyes can perceive things a normal person would never recognize. The brokenhearted are the best empaths of all.

A boy made of stardust and selfishness; a girl filled with fire and fury at the world. We are a tangle of emotional wreckage, two broken messes thrown together, trying to navigate something we can barely comprehend.

Until he taught me to fl, I didn't realize how deep beneath the earth I'd buried my hopes and dreams.

Wyatt’s lips flatten into a serious line. His voice goes low, laced with passion. “Marrying one woman doesn’t mean spending your life with one woman, because the funny girl you fall in love with on a first date at twenty-eight eventually becomes the fascinating creature you propose to at thirty, then evolves into the stunning bride you wait for at the end of an aisle at thirty-two, and finally grows into the astounding mother to your children at thirty-four. By forty, she has blossomed into the businesswoman, the force to be reckoned with. By the time you’re fifty or sixty or seventy or a hundred, she’s been everything — your wife, your lover, your friend, your companion, your sous-chef, your travel partner, your life coach, your confidant, your cheerleader, your critic, your most stalwart advisor. She grows with you. She changes with you. She is always stable, but never stagnant. She is not one woman. She is a thousand versions of herself, a multitude of layers, an infinite ocean whose depths you plumb over a lifetime, whose many treasures and intricacies, quirks and idiosyncrasies you need an entire marriage to explore.” His voice softens. “A man should be so lucky to spend his life stuck with one woman such as that.”-Julie Johnson, "The Monday Girl

Marrying one woman doesn’t mean spending your life with one woman, because the funny girl you fall in love with on a first date at twenty-eight eventually becomes the fascinating creature you propose to at thirty, then evolves into the stunning bride you wait for at the end of an aisle at thirty-two, and finally grows into the astounding mother to your children at thirty-four. By forty, she has blossomed into the businesswoman, the force to be reckoned with. By the time you’re fifty or sixty or seventy or a hundred, she’s been everything — your wife, your lover, your friend, your companion, your sous-chef, your travel partner, your life coach, your confidant, your cheerleader, your critic, your most stalwart advisor. She grows with you. She changes with you. She is always stable, but never stagnant. She is not one woman. She is a thousand versions of herself, a multitude of layers, an infinite ocean whose depths you plumb over a lifetime, whose many treasures and intricacies, quirks and idiosyncrasies you need an entire marriage to explore.” His voice softens. “A man should be so lucky to spend his life stuck with one woman such as that.

Just fuck me up.A caffeine-addict placing an order with the barista.

Of all the people in the world who could've won the seat next to mine at that playoff game... it was you, Gemma. You. The one person on the planet who might just understand me.

When you start to fall, don't try to talk yourself out of it. The right man will be there at the bottom, to catch you.

People are always waiting around for that magical person who’ll walk into their life and fix them, who’ll offer up some vital piece they’ve been missing and make them complete. They spend years trying to fit their broken edges against another person’s and call themselves whole and healed. The only problem with this, of course, is that expecting anyone else to fix you is an unequivocal disaster.You can't wait for a man to come around and put you back together. You have to put yourself back together first, and become the kind of woman who deserves a good man.

When you’ve spent your whole life not being good enough, it takes time to let yourself believe that you finally are. Self-worth isn’t a switch that flips inside you. It’s a daily struggle not to sabotage your own success. Not to cave into the voices inside your head that whisper you’re not good enough, or you’ll fuck things up, or that someone else could do things better than you.

Take a risk on messy. Live Fearlessly. Love recklessly. Most of all, just love.

It might've started as a lie, Faith, but it sure as hell didn't end as one. I might not have been real to you, and that's fine. But you have to know... you were real to me." His voice dropped so low I could barely hear him. "It was real to me. It's still real. The realest fucking thing I've ever felt.

I find some small, twisted comfort in thinking that perhaps we used each other. Him, for a glimpse into what it would be like to live a life entirely different from the one he'd been raised to desire, and me for the steady diet of angst and emotional damage that seemed to make me better, sharper, like a sword against a whetstone.I was his intellectual escape from a long parade of pretty, empty girls... and he was my drug of choice -- unhealthy, probably lethal, but ultimately so addictive it was hard to turn away.The problem, of course, with this theory of mutual exploitation, is that it is the deepest of lies. There was nothing equal or mutual about the way we used each other. I barely scratched his surface while he sliced me limb from limb.There's no comfort in that. None at all.

I pour another drink and wash the taste of dashed dreams from the back of my tongue. I feel half-dead, but my broken heart somehow still beats. What a stubborn, senseless organ, to keep going when all hope and happiness are lost.

To those who would love me - I offer you a warning. Do no get to close. You won't survive.

I am not the Juliet to his Romeo. I am not the lodestar around which he orbits. I am not the trade wind by which he sets the course of his sails. I am not essential or exceptional.I was his Monday girl. Shitty, really, since he was my whole damn week.

You think you can change a guy, that he’ll be different with you, that you’ll finally be the one to tame him… and before you know it, you’re alone in your underwear at nine o’clock on a Saturday night, crying to Adele songs, eating ice cream straight from the gallon, and wondering what the hell is the matter with you that you fell for such a goddamned man-child, after he explicitly warned you not to.

Grayson Dunn is in my head. He's under my skin. He's invaded me like a deadly disease and hijacked my immune system until I don't even bother fighting it anymore. I look at him, and I'm twisted into knots. Tangled into a messy spool of desire and desperation.

People say love isn’t supposed to be painful. But maybe the best things in life are the ones that hurt the most after they’re gone.

No amount of soul searching would fix my past. There was no magical Band-Aid I could stick on my heart, no special glue I could use to make myself whole again. I had shattered to pieces like a fragile vase on concrete; some fragments could be roughly cobbled back together, but many of my vital parts had simply turned to dust, pulverized and scattered by the first gust of wind.

Did you ever stop to think that even if I am a monster, I might be your soulmate anyway?

Maybe you're right, Red. Maybe I am hateful. Maybe I ruined your life. Maybe I'm the devil, and the worst thing that ever happened to you, and a million other awful things... But did you ever stop to think that even if I am a monster... I might be your soulmate, anyway?

Nate and me... we aren't built for truces, for good times, for light jokes and giggles. We're meant for the shadows. For the dirty, ugly, secret parts of our souls, the parts we can't hide because we know each other too well.

The way I see it, everyone’s been telling the story wrong. I mean, take Cinderella, for example. She never asked for a Prince, let alone waited around for one. Hell, all she ever wanted was a night off from work and a fancy dress to twirl in for a few hours. It’s never made sense to me that I’m supposed to sit around pining for some mythical Prince Charming to get off his ass and rescue me. If that’s the grand game plan, I could end up waiting forever. Because, I mean, if he’s anything like the rest of the male population, the prince is probably stuck in traffic somewhere, or got lost along the way and is too damn stubborn to ask for directions.

I was alone, for twenty-five years. And I didn't give a shit, because I didn't know what I was missing. Then, this stubborn, beautiful fucking brunette came barreling into my life and shoved her way through all the shadows.