Quotes from Laura Dave

Maybe we are all fools, one way or another, when it comes to seeing the totality of the people who love us--the people we try to love. [Hannah Hall]

Someone's affection would give someone else freedom.

But I knew the other part wasn't about me, so I decide not to make it about me now. It's never about someone else the moment you realize it is up to you to get yourself to a better place. It's only about figuring out how to get there.

If things were eventually going to work out, did it matter how you got there? Didn't it ultimately just matter that you got the ending you wanted?

Even now, after Nick had caused me pain, the truth was I didn't want to cause him any. Wasn't that love, after all?

why people travel far from home-far from where they started. There was, of course, the obvious reason:escape. Escape from the monotony of every day. SO many of us chasing what we wished our everyday existence could be instead. But there was a less obvious and perhaps more important reason. Somewhere, often right in the middle of a trip, you got to believe this was your everyday life. You got to believe you were never going home again.

This was something we sometimes did on days we got home late—on days we were too tired to get into the big stuff. We each picked one thing from the day to tell each other about. One good thing from our separate lives.

In one way or another, this is the deal we all sign when we love someone. For better or worse. It's the deal we have to sign again and again to keep that love. We don't turn away from the parts of someone we don't want to see. However quickly or long it takes to see them. We accept them if we are strong enough. Or we accept them enough to not let the bad parts become the entire story. Because

A small, inexplicable part of me was scared, right from the start - of counting on someone, of trusting that he'd always be there for me - as much it was exactly what another part of me wanted.

There are words and there are feelings and somewhere between where the two meet is the truth

I just think people forget what it feels like to really be in love, you know? Like when that's the only thing in the world that matters. I just don't want to decide it's not that important.

knew each other in that honest, unmitigated way that people get to know you who meet you when you're still young. Before all the rest of it. Before it becomes both easier and harder to know yourself.

You may have to go with English," Bailey says. "Einstein said, So far as the theories of mathematics are about reality, they are not certain; so far as they are certain, they are not about reality." Bailey tilts her head. "Still waiting on the English there, Professor," she says. "It basically means, we don't know shit about anything," he says.

It's weird to live somewhere where you can't see the stars.

People don't break up because someone's family is a little . . . messy. If that were the case, no one would ever get married.

What I'm trying to say is that it will be okay between you and Nate. Because you both want that. Because you both want that more than anything. It sounds simple, but I'm learning that the problems start when you want different things

He never understood that I wasn't scared of someone leaving me. I was scared that the wrong person would stay.

It seemed to me that the universe was tricky that way--as soon as you didn't need something as badly, as soon as you hold onto the hope of it less tightly, you get a second shot at it.

Thing is, either way we cut it, we shouldn't test the people we love

What happened the day I met your father,' she said, 'is that I learned you ave to choose. For better or for worse. You have to choose what your life is going to look like.

But that's not how you learn you can count on someone. You learn it in the moments when everyone's too tired to be sweet, too tired to try hard. You learn it by what they do for you then.

People get more work done when they don't talk.

Don't Ask a Question You Don't Want the Answer To

You have something you want to do. Something you like to do. Something you're good at. Why don't we start with that? Why don't you let that be the entire plan for now?