But the problem with looking back when you should be walking ahead is that you usually end up walking into something that hurts.Collection: Hurt
There are many things I don't know, but quite a few I do. I know you can't be lost if you know where you are. I know that life is full of precious and fragile things, and not all of them are pretty. I know that the sun follows the moon and makes days, one after another. Time passes. The world turns, and we turn with it, and though we can never go back to the beginning, sometimes, we can start again.Collection: Moon
When you find someone who makes you smile and laugh, when you find someone who makes you feel safe…you shouldn’t let that person go just because you’re afraid.Collection: Laughing
I waited for a long time and there was nothing but the pain of wanting something I couldn't seem to find.Collection: Pain
You never fall in love with anyone the same way you fell in love with someone else. It's always different, every time, if you're lucky-or cursed-enough to have it happen more than once. But I've never been uncertain about love, not any of the times I found myself in it. Love is always real, even when it doesn't last.Collection: Falling In Love
When everything changes we learn who we really are. What’s really important. What we want most. We discover the truth in moments of disarray.Collection: Important
There are few times when we know with absolute certainty we are going to do something for the last time. Life has a way of moving in circles, bringing us back to places we didn’t expect and taking us away from those we do. There are too many times we don’t pay close enough attention, and moments are lost in our assumption we’ll have another chance.Collection: Moving
But sometimes it's the sunshine that frightens us more than the big black shadows.Collection: Sunshine
The past doesn't change no matter how much time you spend thinking about it. Good and bad all add up to the whole. Take away one piece, no matter how small, and the whole changes. Whether it's optimism, pessimism or fatalism, I don't spend my time wishing for the past to be different so present would be different, too. I control my future with what I choose now.Collection: Thinking
I have seen clouds part for the sun. I have seen rainbows. I have seen flowers in the morning, covered in dew, and I have seen sunsets so brilliant with fire they made me want to weep. And I have seen Dan smile at me, his lips still wet from my kiss, and if I had to choose which sight moved me the most I would say it was that one.Collection: Morning
We look at each other without saying anything, both of us smiling like idiots. I heart is so full I can’t believe it can possibly still beat without bursting right in front of me. My desire for him is so fierce I’m afraid to stand, because I know my knees will be too weak to hold me up, but there’s more than that. This great and bursting thing inside me is love.Collection: Believe
I could say his body was perfect and every part of it beautiful, because it was. Not because he had no flaws, but because I wanted him so desperately I couldn’t see any.Collection: Beautiful
One must have sorrow to truly appreciate joy.Collection: Appreciate
Choices. We all make them, sometimes more than once. Sometimes it's the choices we make over and over that define us, but more often it's the choices we don't make.Collection: Choices
You know what the best part of the stars is?" "What's that?" "They're the same no matter what sky you're standing under. I mean...yeah, they might move or look like they're in a different place, but they're the same stars." "Yeah? So?" "So even if you're apart from someone you want to be with, you can look up at the stars and know they're looking at the same ones.Collection: Stars
You don’t have to be sad to miss someone and wish they were still in your life.Collection: Missing Someone
I know everything and nothing about him all at the same time.Collection: Broken
Good things, by their nature, are fleeting. It’s those that bring us grief that linger.Collection: Grief
Love is always real, even when it doesn’t last.Collection: Real
A good sister is one who won't be embarrassed when you burst into tears in public. A better one will hand you tissues until you stop. The best is the one who will go get you another latte to go with the ginormous chocolate orgy she's already laid in front of you.Collection: Hands
They’re like sharks. Circling. Cute, single guy, good job, nice car. It’s all they know about me.” His tone was light but his expression serious. Maybe that’s because it’s all you show them.” Maybe it’s all they want to see.Collection: Cute
And you’re not afraid of it ending?” “Sure I am. But I’d rather have something this good for a little while than have nothing forever.Collection: Forever
Tears disturb and confuse men, but women know the relief they can bring. I didn't cry because I couldn't deal with my life, but because I could.Collection: Men
Knowing what you need doesn't always mean you know how to get it, though. I'd spent a long time hiding in my cave. No matter how much I might want to come out into the light, I knew it would hurt my eyes. I was a fool. A fool, but nevertheless too smart not to know I was the architect of my own demise, that it was time to put my past behind me. It was time to stop allowing the white elephants to stand unspoken of in my living room.Collection: Hurt
Foolish. Stupid. I knew it. I knew my reaction was unreasonable, bu the heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing. Blaise Pascal said that, and I've always found it to be true.Collection: Stupid
I do not like that I allowed my past to close me off. I do not like that I let circumstances rob me of the ability to have a normal relationship with a man, to have friends, to be happy. I do not like it, but I had felt myself powerless against it.Collection: Past
Sometimes grief is a comfort we grant ourselves because it's less terrifying than trying for joy.Collection: Grief
Can I tell you honestly that I'd rather be in your life as your friend than nothing at all?Collection: Honestly
I didn’t fall in love with James. Falling sounds like an accident. Falling hurts. I’d fallen in love with Michael, fallen hard like slipping off a cliff and hitting the rocks below. Falling in love was something I’d vowed never to do again. I chose to love James.Collection: Falling In Love
If you want to know how someone really feels, you almost never have to ask.Collection: Want
You know what they say. Best revenge is looking good, right?Collection: Revenge
I've been hit on plenty of times, mostly by men with little finesse who thought what was between their legs made up for what they lacked between their ears.Collection: Men
Jealousy smells like the water in the bottom of a flower vase after the flowers have died.Collection: Flower
What are you, Elle? Are you a ghost? Are you an angel or a demon? Because you can’t be real.Collection: Real
All men have the stars, but they are not the same things for different people.Collection: Stars
Abandoning a task that is futile and pointless is not giving up.Collection: Giving Up
It was not a happy ending of the sort in fairy tales, but it was the only one we had.Collection: Fairy Tale
It is such a secret place, the land of tears. That is what the narrator ofThe Little Prince says after the little prince argues with him the first time about matters of consequence. And he was right. My land of tears had been a secret for a very long time.Collection: Secret Places
I had no words to give him. No explanation. I didn’t understand it, myself. It scared me, but then so do roller coasters, and I ride them anyway, too.Collection: Giving
We labored under the pretense that nothing had changed when everything had, and I understood him, but i no longer knew him.Collection: Changed
There's nothing that says you can't change." "Not even if it changes everything else?" I shook my head. "Not even then.Collection: Can't Change
Sometimes, you turn back. Sometimes, you walk away. And sometimes, you find the place you're meant to be, and you stay there. You find a way to make it work. Whatever it takes.Collection: Way
Sometimes,” he said after a second that lasted a million years, “things get broken. And they can’t be fixed.Collection: Years
Sometimes,” Joe said after a bit, “it’s just easier to keep being what everyone expects you to be. Even if that’s what you’re not, anymore.Collection: Sometimes
Does madness bring creativity? Or does creativity cause madness? Can an artist create without the ups so high and the downs so low?Collection: Creativity
Macy: "Listen, I can't pretend to be the queen of good advice, here. I've had more boyfriends than I can count, and I'm not so sure that's any better than not having any. But I do know this. When you find someone who makes you smile and laugh, when you find someone who makes you feel safe, you shouldn't let that person go just because you're afraid." Elle: "And you're not afraid of it ending?" Macy: "Sure I am, But I'd rather have something this good for a little while than have nothing foreverCollection: Queens
Sometimes grief is a comfort we grant ourselves because it's less terrifying than trying for joy. Nobody wants to admit it. We'd all declare we want to be happy, if we could. So why, then, is pain the one thing we most often hold on to? Why are slights and griefs the memories on which we choose to dwell? Is it because joy doesn't last but grief does?Collection: Pain
Scars are proof we can can surviveCollection: Scar
I looked at the cards in my hand, the queen of hearts nestled between the king of clubs and the king of spades. No wonder she was smiling.Collection: Queens
He put my fingertips to his mouth and kissed them. Licked the trace of blood away. Made them clean. Then I knew the truth I had been denying. He made me clean. Dan made me clean and shining and bright. He made me beautiful, and I did not want to lose him.Collection: Beautiful