Quotes from Laura Dave

We always have a choice. That's what Grady said too. What does that even mean? That there is a right thing to do and there is a wrong thing to do. Simple. Judgmental. And if you are the person someone is asking that question about, you have chosen wrong—as if the world is divided between the people who have never made a big mistake. And the people who have.

quoting Steinbeck-Peter said,'A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.

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

only knows that the important part is to decide to stay. Again and again. And, on the days you can't, to resist deciding anything else.

But being absent and being peaceful are two different things. They can look alike, but they are really the opposite.

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.

I hear the crazy. She sounds crazy. Maybe that's what happens when the bottom falls out, you lose the ability to modulate—to make your words make sense to the rest of the world.

problems came when I tried to fit myself into someone else's life

Maybe this only had to be as big as I let it be. So why was I letting it be everything?

weekend ritual to sit on the bench together, drinking our morning coffee.

Growing up is never idyllic, is it? Or it'd be called something else.

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.

Beauty won't protect you. Not in the end. What will is the one thing you can't plan for. The one thing you can't save for or search for or even find. It has to find you and decide to stay. Time. More of it. More of it to try and make things right.

That is love, baby girl. Working hard when we don't feel like it.

Most of the time a person wants something more than anything else. You can tell because at the end of the day that's what they're willing to fight for -Dan

My father never measured success the way he did - reaching the top-top of something, as if there was an objective tip-top. My father measured it by how well you figured out what you wanted for your life - what you needed to be happy -Georgia

Dan: Finn and Bobby are fighting over the wrong thing. But at least they're fighting. Georgia: And how is that good? Dan: Because that's the only way to get somewhere better. If you fight, you work it out. If you don't fight, you move into your own corners, and nothing gets decided there

The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made. —Groucho Marx

I don't deserve a second chance, but sometimes when someone doesn't, that's exactly when you need to give them one.

There were certain things that you hit from different angles, but you never gave up on.

How do you explain it when you find in someone what you've been waiting for your whole life? Do you call it fate? It feels lazy to call it fate. It's more like finding your way home—where home is a place you secretly hoped for, a place you imagined, but where you'd never before been.

Gotta pick a piece of wood," I said. "It all starts with picking a good piece of wood. If that's no good, you have nowhere good to go." "How

You did the work that was needed, wherever that work took you.

Watching my grandfather work taught me that not everything was fluid. There were certain things that you hit from different angles, but you never gave up on. You did the work that was needed, wherever that work took you. [Hannah Hall]