Quotes from Laura Dave

moat. It's a stark reminder that there is no getting in or out

the terrible thing about a tragedy. It isn't with you every minute. You forget it, and then you remember it again. And you see it with a stark quality: This is what is required of you now, just to get along.

The way you say hello. The way you say goodbye.

This is the terrible thing about a tragedy. It isn't with you every minute. You forget it, and then you remember it again.

Thing is, either way we cut it, we shouldn't test the people we love," he said. "We do, but it's shitty and ultimately, regardless of what they did or didn't do, we're the ones who feel like we failed.

And you shall take me strongly In your arms again And I will not remember That I ever felt the pain.

The Uber pulls onto Presidential Boulevard and heads toward the hotel, which is on Lady Bird Lake near the Congress Avenue Bridge.

You can't finish the things you weren't supposed to start.

Mother-in-laws are the worst. You know, they don't like you, they make you feel bad about yourself, they have a divorce party the day you meet them and you have to face the fact that they are crazy. Plus, if you aren't very sure of yourself, you may start feeling like you are going that way too.

It feels like a victory that we are moving closer to the truth. But when the truth is taking you somewhere you don't want to go, you also aren't sure. You aren't sure you want that win.

it is an amazing thing to be with someone who really sees you.

I'm just not sure who I should be trusting here,' she says. 'Me,' I say. 'Just me.' She bites her lip, like she believes me, or at least like she is starting to believe me - which is more than I could hope for in this moment. Because you can't tell people to trust you. You have to show them that they can. And I haven't had enough time.

car. I headed down CA-116—the winding road

It gets creepy in the Hamptons after Labor Day. Like, I'm talking The Shining creepy.

Sometimes your passion takes work and you shouldn't give up on it just because it isn't easy…

make this all work." "My grandfather used to say that most people don't want to hear the thing that will make it work better," I said. "They

The part where you need to choose among the choices that are there, and not the ones that aren't anymore. At least not how you need them to be. You're still stuck on some imaginary idea you have of how it could have been. You need to think about how it is now. And how you want it to be.

Then he stands up and starts to head out, the way he came. And it's then that he says the one thing that only he would say to me. "The could-have-been boys still love you," Owen says. He isn't looking at me when he says it, his voice low. The way you say hello. The way you say goodbye.

I'd remember Matt, and I'd remember him wrong. And that was probably when I'd miss him most.

Wasn't that the gift of a home? You looked at it the same way, but then when you needed it to, it showed you all over again the many ways you'd been during the time you had been living there. The many ways it brought you back to yourself. The many ways it still brought you back to yourself.

was like I was hurting myself and he was showing me how it looked. It was right there on his face. How it looked when we listened to our fear. Our uncertainty. When we let it be the thing that guides us. How, even if it may masquerade as safety, it almost always, ultimately, does more damage than figuring out how to do something greater, braver. Something bold. Be the opposite of yourself.

Owen and I have made it our weekend ritual to sit on the bench together drinking our morning coffee. It's our time to catch up on the week as the sun rises slowly over the San Francisco Bay, catching the bench in its warmth.

When I finally allow myself to look up, it's Bailey that I see. It cools me out, immediately, centers me. She is walking toward me from the same direction Owen has gone. She's in her gray sweater dress and high-top Converse, her long, brown hair running halfway down her back. Did Owen pass her? Did he get to see for himself how beautiful she has become? How sure of herself? I hope so. I hope so at the same time I hope not. Which way, after all, spares him?

A load lifted as the day stretches out before him, empty and relaxed.