Quotes from Emily Giffin

If she liked him so darn much, she should have done something about it. Taken some real action.

And yet, there is nobody I'd rather talk to, be near, look at, than my husband, an unprecedented feeling that overcame me the moment we met.

The surprise element of her betrayal was what burned me the most. The fact that I never saw it coming.

Whenever I hear of someone else's tragedy, I do not dwell on the accident or diagnosis, or even the initial shock waves or aftermath of grief. Instead, I find myself reconstructing those final ordinary moments. Moments that make up our lives. Moments that were blissfully taken for granted--and that likely would have been forgotten altogether but for what followed. The before snapshots.

Sometimes there are no happy endings. No matter what, I'll be losing something, someone. But maybe that's what it all comes down to. Love, not as a surge of passion, but as a choice to commit to something, someone, no matter what obstacles or temptations stand in the way. And maybe making that choice, again and again, day in and day out, year after year, says more about love than never having a choice to make at all.

There is emotion, and then there is what you do about it.

At some point, though, I gritted my teeth—literally—and told myself that was no way to approach life. I had to stop panicking. If I didn't calm down and believe in myself, at least a little bit, how could anyone else?

I think I have always had the misguided sense that worry and fear serve as an insurance policy of sorts. On a subconscious level, I subscribe to the notion that if you worry about something, it is somehow less likely to happen. Well, I am here to say that it doesn't work like that. The very thing you fear the most can still happen anyway. And when it does, you feel that much more cheated for having feared it in the first place.

But there is one constant, one thing you can always count on: that not only does love come first, but in the end, it is the only thing that remains.

After all, you reach the mundane, comfortable moments only when a relationship is working. When it's not working, the passion morphs into something twisted and dark. Drama. Jealousy. A never-ending power struggle.

It is not what I had planned - this day, this moment, these unlikely relationships, both old and new. Yet I feel overcome with peace and certainty that, for once, I am exactly where I should be.

Being married cuts on your freedom. Having a husband or a relationship at all puts constraints on you. by Michael.

But I cherished our filterless relationship and considered it the truest measure of a best friend, greater than pure affection.

and more important, did he love me as much as he once loved me?

although the truth is, I'm not quite sure how I feel.

First of all, it's impossible not to compare. When you go down a fork in a road, it's impossible not to think about that other path. Wonder what your life could have been like…

There are people and places and events that lead you to your final relationship, people and places and events you'd prefer to forget or at least gloss over. In the end, you can slap a pretty label on it- like serendipity or fate. Or you can believe that it's just the random way life unfolds.

But no matter what you call it, it seems that every couple has two stories- the edited one to be shared from the couch and the unabridged version, best left alone.

He was just the wrong guy for me at the time. Nothing more, nothing less.

Women in the twenty-first century (which still sounds so funny to my ears) have options. We can marry or not marry; have children or not have children; be stay-at-home mothers or have careers. So yes, I told her, I want to get married, and yes, I want to find a life mate sooner rather than later, but that didn't make me a bad feminist. It just made me determined to have it all—

It's like when someone dies, the initial stages of grief seem to be the worst. But in some ways, it's sadder as time goes by and you consider how much they're missed in your life. In the world.

Because sometimes I have the feeling that everyone thinks that everyone else is living a fairy tale. Especially in the South. People fake things so much. Put on a happy face and show off your perfect life.

Second chances are rare and wonderful.

But I also knew in my heart that I wouldn't cover for my son if he committed a terrible crime. Any crime. I wouldn't lie for him. I wouldn't obstruct justice for him. I would stand by him, but I would also want him to confess and truly repent and bear responsibility for his actions. I would want him to earn and deserve his forgiveness.