One True Loves

“Just because something isn’t meant to last a lifetime doesn’t mean it wasn’t meant to be.”

“Good things don’t wait until you’re ready. Sometimes they come right before, when you’re almost there. And I figured when that happens, you can let them pass by like a bus not meant for you. Or you can get ready. So I got ready.”

“I had predicated my life on the idea that I wanted to see everywhere extraordinary, but I’d come to realize that extraordinary is everywhere.”

“don’t think that true love means your only love.I think true love means loving truly.Loving purely. Loving wholly.Maybe, if you’re the kind of person who’s willing to give all of yourself, the kind of person who is willing to love with all of your heart even though you’ve experienced just how much it can hurt . . . maybe you get lots of true loves, then. Maybe that’s the gift you get for being brave.”

“They say that when you remember something, you are really remembering the last time you remembered it. Each time you recollect a memory, you change it, ever so slightly, shading it with new information, new feelings.”

“Falling out of love with someone you still like feels exactly like lying in a warm bed and hearing the alarm clock.No matter how good you feel right now, you know it’s time to go.”

“True love doesn’t always last,” I say. “It doesn’t always have to be for a lifetime”

“There is other love out there for me. But it’s different. It isn’t this. It isn’t this exact love. It’s better and it’s worse. But I guess that’s sort of the point of love between two people—you can’t re-create it. Every time you love, everyone you love, the love is different. You’re different in it.”

“We are two people who are madly in love with our old selves. And that is not the same as being in love.”

“When you love someone, it seeps out of everything you do, it bleeds into everything you say, it becomes so ever-present, that eventually it becomes ordinary to hear, no matter how extraordinary it is to feel.”

“I have changed over time. That’s what people do.People aren’t stagnant. We evolve in reaction to our pleasures and our pains.”

“Flirting is probably just as much about falling in love with yourself as it is with someone else. It's about seeing yourself through someone's eyes and realizing there is plenty to like about yourself, plenty of reasons someone might hang on your every word.”

“I think that perhaps everyone has a moment that splits their life in two. When you look back on your own time line there's a sharp spike somewhere along the way, some event that changed you, changed your life more than the others. A moment that creates a before and an after. Maybe it's when you meet your love or you figure out your life's passion or you have your first child. Maybe it's something wonderful. Maybe it's something tragic. But when it happens it tints your memories, shifts your perspective on your own life and it suddenly seems as if everyone you've been through falls under the label of pre or post.”

“I once thought that grief was chronic, that all you could do was appreciate the good days and take them along with the bad. And then I started to think that maybe the good days aren't just days; maybe the good days can be good weeks, good months, good years. Now I wonder if grief isn't something like a shell. You wear it for a long time and then one day you realize you've outgrown it. So you put it down.”

“We loved each other and we lost each other. And now, even though we still love each other, the pieces don’t fit like they used to.”I could make myself fit for him.He could make himself fit for me.But that’s not true love.”

“It’s a scary thought, isn’t it? That every single person on this planet could lose their one true love and live to love again? It means the one you love could love again if they lost you.”

“It’s funny, isn’t it? So often men see betrayal in what you’ve done instead of how you feel.”

“When you lose someone you love, it’s hard to imagine that you’ll ever feel better. That, one day, you’ll manage to be in a good mood simply because the weather is nice or the barista at the coffee shop on the corner remembered your order.But it does happen.If you’re patient and you work at it.”

“Sam smiled. “Think of all the people in the world,” he said, tucking my longest hair behind my ear. “And I was lucky enough to find you twice.”.”

“I want to be with someone who lives for me. I want to be with someone who considers me the love of her life. I deserve that.”

“You are happier to have known him than you are sad to have lost him.”

“What else could you want in a person other than kindness and humor? I'm not sure anything else really matters to me.”

“Hollow and empty are terrible ways to feel when you're used to being full of joy. But it's not so bad when you're used to feeling full of pain. Hollow feels okay. Empty feels like a beginning. Which is nice, because for so long you have felt like you were at the end.”

“I am who I am because I loved you once,” he says. “I am who I am because I loved you once, too,” I say. And then we say good-bye.”

“I think, maybe, this is what true love means.Maybe true love is warming someone up from the cold, or tenderly brushing a hair away, because you care about them with every bone in your body even though you know what’s between you won’t last.”

“Good things don’t wait until you’re ready. Sometimes they come right before, when you’re almost there.”

“I have something really important to tell you,” he said. “Are you ready? It’s really important. It’s breaking news.”“Tell me.”“I’ll love you forever.”“I already knew that,” I said. “And I’ll love you forever, too.”“Yeah?”“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll love you until we’re so old we can barely walk on our own and we have to get walkers and put those cut-up yellow tennis balls on them. I’ll love you past that, actually. I’ll love you until the end of time.”

“Romantic love is a beautiful thing under the right circumstances. But those circumstances are so specific and rare, aren’t they?It’s rare that you love the person who loves you, that you love only the person who loves only you. Otherwise, somebody’s heartbroken.”

“You start to understand that grief is chronic. That it's more about remission and relapse than it is about a cure. What that means to you is that you can't simply wait for it to be over. You have to move through it, like swimming in an undertow.”

“There is nothing more romantic than this. Holding the very person that you thought you lost, and knowing you’ll never lose them again.”