Life is a gift. Don't forget to live it.

In my head I know I've been in love before, but it doesn't feel like it. Being in love with you is better than the first time. It feels like the first time and the last time and the only time all at once.

Everything's a risk. Not doing anything is a risk. It's up to you.

For the first time in a long time, I want more than I have.

Names are powerful things.

What are we talking about again?” he asks.I say science at the same time that he says love, and we both laugh.“What are the ingredients?” he prompts me again.“Mutual self-interest and socioeconomic compatibility.”“Do you even have a soul?”“No such thing as a soul,” I say.

I've never understood the phrase they have chemistry before now. After all, everything is chemistry. Everything is combination and reaction. The atoms in by body align themselves with the atoms in his.

According to scientists, there are three stages of love: lust, attraction, and attachment. And, it turns out, each of the stages is orchestrated by chemicals—neurotransmitters—in the brain.As you might expect, lust is ruled by testosterone and estrogen.The second stage, attraction, is governed by dopamine and serotonin. When, for example, couples report feeling indescribably happy in each other’s presence, that’s dopamine, the pleasure hormone, doing its work.Taking cocaine fosters the same level of euphoria. In fact, scientists who study both the brains of new lovers and cocaine addicts are hard-pressed to tell the difference.The second chemical of the attraction phase is serotonin. When couples confess that they can’t stop thinking about each other, it’s because their serotonin level has dropped. People in love have the same low serotonin levels as people with OCD. The reason they can’t stop thinking about each other is that they are literally obsessed.Oxytocin and vasopressin control the third stage: attachment or long-term bonding. Oxytocin is released during orgasm and makes you feel closer to the person you’ve had sex with. It’s also released during childbirth and helps bond mother to child. Vasopressin is released postcoitally.Natasha knows these facts cold. Knowing them helped her get over Rob’s betrayal. So she knows: love is just chemicals and coincidence.So why does Daniel feel like something more?

Dark matter is love. It's the attracting force.

Sometimes I reread my favorite books from back to front. I start with the last chapter and read backward until I get to the beginning. When you read this way, characters go from hope to despair, from self-knowledge to doubt. In love stories, couples start out as lovers and end as strangers. Coming-of-age books become stories of losing your way. Your favorite characters come back to life.

Olly: jesus. is there a girl on this planet who doesn't love mr.darcyMadeline: All girls love Mr. Darcy?Olly: are you kidding? even my sister loves darcy and she doesn't love anybodyMadeline: She must love somebody. I'm sure she loves youOlly: what's so great about darcy?Madeline: That's not a serious questionOlly: he's a snobMadeline: But he overcomes it and eventually realizes that character matters more than class! He's a man open to learning life's lessons! Also, he's completely gorgeous and noble and brooding and poetic. Did I mention gorgeous? Also, he loves Elizabeth beyond all reason.

Flowers for Algernon again? she asks. Doesn't that book always make you cry?One day it won't, I say. I want to be sure to be reading it on that day.

How can he not share his newfound joy with his fellow man? And it is joy. There’s a pure kind of joy in the certainty of belief. The certainty that your life has purpose and meaning.

Should I tell him that I think dreams never die even when they're dead?

I dream that I run away from home taking the bot I love with me. I dream that I saw the ocean and it was endless and that I could not find the end of it. I dream that I fall asleep in an unquiet room with the boy that loves me and that I dream that I've run away from home taking the boy I love with me. I dream that I saw the ocean and it was endless and I could not find the end of it. I dream that I fall asleep in an unquiet room and that I dream about the life I'm already living.

From so high above it, the world seems ordered and deliberate.But I know it's more than that. And less. It is structured and chaotic. Beautiful and strange.

CARL SAGAN SAID that if you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. When he says “from scratch,” he means fromnothing. He means from a time before the world even existed. If you want to make an apple pie from nothing at all, you have to start with the Big Bang and expanding universes, neutrons, ions, atoms, black holes, suns, moons, ocean tides, the Milky Way, Earth, evolution, dinosaurs, extinction- level events, platypuses,Homo erectus, Cro- Magnon man, etc. You have to start at the beginning. You must invent fire. You need water and fertile soil and seeds. You need cows and people to milk them and more people to churn that milk into butter. You need wheat and sugar cane and apple trees. You need chemistry and biology. For a really good apple pie, you need the arts. For an apple pie that can last for generations, you need the printing press and the Industrial Revolution and maybe even a poem.To make a thing as simple as an apple pie, you have to create the whole wide world.

I wonder if she realizes how passionate she is about not being passionate.

Did your parents care that he was white?""They never met him." I couldn't imagine taking him to meet my dad. Watching them talk to each other would've been tortuous. Also, I never wanted him to see how small our apartment was. In the end, I guess I really didn't want him to know me.With Daniel, it's different somehow. I want him to see all of me.

However, if the long shot is your only shot, then you have to take it.

Words, Natasha thinks, should behave more like units of measure. A meter is a meter is a meter. Words shouldn't be allowed to change meanings. Who decides that the meaning has changed, and when? Is there an in-between time when the word means both things? Or a time when the word doesn't mean anything at all?

But can you trust something that can end as suddenly as it begins?

And what about the lovers who spend hours staring into each other's eyes? Is it a display of trust? 'I will let you in close and trust you not to hurt me while I'm in this vulnerable position.' And if trust is one of the foundations of love, perhaps the staring is a way to build or reinforce it. Or maybe it's simpler than that.A simple search for connectionTo see.To be seen.

And what about the lovers who spend hours staring into each other's eyes? Is it a display of trust? I will let you in close and trust you not to hurt me while I'm in this vulnerable position. And if trust is one of the foundations of love, perhaps the staring is a way to build or reinforce it. Or maybe it's simpler than that. A simple search for connection.To see.To be seen.

And what about the lovers who spend hours staring into each other's eyes?Is it a display of trust? I will let you in close and trust you not to hurt me while I'm in this vulnerable position. And if trust is one of the foundations of love, perhaps the staring is a way to build or reinforce it. Or maybe it's simpler than that. A simple search for connection.To see.To be seen.

How can you trust something that can end as suddenly as it begins?

I almost wish I hadn't met him. How am I supposed to go back to my old life, my days stretching out before me with unending and brutal sameness? How am I supposed to go back to being The Girl Who Reads?

maybe part of falling in love with someone else is also falling in love with yourself

Growing up and seeing your parents' flaws is like losing your religion. I don't believe in God anymore. I don't believe in my father either.

I kiss him to get him to stop talking. If he keeps talking I will love him, and I don't want to love him. I really don't. As strategies go, it's not my finest. Kissing is just another way of talking except without the words.

Is it always like that?" I ask, breathless. “No,” he says. “It's never like that.” I hear the wonder in his voice. And just like that, everything changes.

Love is worth everything. Everything.

They don't know what poor is. They don't know that poverty is a sharp knife carving away at you. They don't know what it does to the body. To a mind.

Yay, science.

Do you think it’s funny that both of our favorite memories are about the people we like the least now?” I ask.“Maybe that’s why we dislike them,” she says. “The distance between who they were and who they are is so wide, we have no hope of getting them back.

A photograph is a kind of time machine.

Observable Fact: I don’t believe in magic.Observable Fact: We are magic.

o•cean (ˈōSHən) n. pl. -s. 1. The endless part of yourself you never knew but always suspected was there. [2015, Whittier]

When I was younger, one of my favorite activities was imagining alternative-universe versions of myself. Sometimes I was a rosy-cheeked outdoorsy girl who ate flowers and hiked alone, uphill, for miles. Or I was a skydiving, drag-racing, adrenaline-fueled daredevil. Or a chain mail-wearing, sword swinging dragon slayer. It was fun to imagine those things because I already knew who I was. Now I don't know anything. I don't know who I'm supposed to be in my new world.

Hearts don’t break.It’s just another thing the poets say.Hearts are not madeOf glassOr boneOr any material that couldSplinterOr FragmentOr Shatter.They don’tCrack Into Pieces.They don’tFall Apart.Hearts don’t break.They just stop working.An old watch from another time and no parts to fix it.

I know she's just trying to protect me, just as I was to protect myself a few short weeks ago, but her words make me aware that the heart in my chest is a muscles like any other. It can hurt.

But I like my big Afro. I also liked when my hair was longer and relaxed. I’m happy to have choices. They’re mine to make

I’m kind of a contagion cryer. You know how when one person starts yawning, everyone else starts yawning too? Or when someone vomits, the smell makes you want to hurl? I’m like that, except with crying.

seriously. “Just because you can’t experience everything doesn’t mean you shouldn’t experience anything.-Nicola Yoon, Everything, Everything

I was trying so hard to find the single pivotal moment that set my life on its path. The moment that answered the question, 'How did I get here?'But it's never just one moment. It's a series of them. And your life can branch out from each one in a thousand different ways. Maybe there's a version of your life for all the choices you make and all the choices you don't.

Everything's a risk. Not doing anything is a risk.

In two weeks my skin will have no memory of Olly's hand on mine, but my brain will remember. We can have immortality or the memory of touch. But we can't have both.

If people who were actually born had to prove they were worthy enough to live in America, this would be a much less populated country.

He tastes like salted caramel and sunshine. Or what I think salted caramel and sunshine taste like. He tastes like nothing I've ever experienced, like hope and possibility and future

Who reads? Not that I begrudge my life in book. All I know about the world I've learned from them. But a description of a tree is not a tree, and a thousand paper kisses will never equal the feel of Olly's lips against mine.

If I could, I would kiss him every second of every day. For all the days.

My guilt is an ocean for me to drown in.

He says they're not his type, but I don't really get the concept of having a type. My type is girls. All of them. Why would I limit my dating pool?

Be Brave. Remember, life is a gift.

Anything can happen at anytime. Safety is not guaranteed. There's more to life than being alive.

Loving someone as fiercely as my mom loves me must be like wearing your heart outside of your body with no skin, no bones, no nothing to protect it.

[His eyes are] Atlantic Ocean blue, just like he'd said. It's strange because of course I'd known that. But the difference between knowing it and seeing them in person is the difference between dreaming of flying and flight.

Love won't kill you.-Carla

This is the life you're living. It's not temporary and it's not pretend and there's no do-over.

The ocean will swallow you whole and burp you out and not notice you were even there.

The ocean here is weird. It's the wrong kind of blue.

He thinks my hair smells like spring rain. I'm really trying to remain stoic and unaffected. I remind myself that I don't like poetic language. I don't like poetry. I don't even like people who like poetry.But I'm not dead inside either.

His words made me aware that the heart in my chest is a muscle like any other. It can hurt.

There's no denying it now. I'm in the world. And, too, the world is in me.

A universe that can wink into existence can wink out again.

Touching him is order and chaos, like being assembled and disassembled at the same time.

Kissing is just another way of talking expect without the words.

I could stay here forever interrupting our talking with kissing, interrupting our kissing with talking.

I've read many more books than you. It doesn't matter how many you've read. I've read more. Believe me.” ― Nicola Yoon, Everything, Everything

I want to fall in love, with an emphasis on the falling part.