Home > Author > Dallas Woodburn
1 " Everyone, even Kai, looks like a tourist in a snorkel mask. And maybe we are all tourists in this underwater world—snorkels are our temporary visas, allowing us to visit this mysterious country for brief slices of time. "
― Dallas Woodburn , The Best Week that Never Happened
2 " The waves sweep into us. Their unending rhythm comforts me. These waves were here when we were kids. They were here during my last visit. They were here during all the years I was somewhere else. The waves are here whether I am thinking about them or not. They simply exist. Here before we were born. Here after we die. These waves, rolling in and receding out. Constant. "
3 " Before this week, I never realized that real-life romance isn’t like the movies. Things don’t have to be so serious and intense all the time. You can have intensely serious feelings for someone and be silly with them. You can go from making out to laughing, and back to making out, and that’s okay. "
4 " I had that teetering-on-the-edge-of-a-cliff feeling—it would be so easy to close my eyes and let myself fall down into the unknown. But it was terrifying, that feeling. I preferred to be standing firmly on stable ground. So I did my best to pull back from the cliff’s edge. "
5 " The o'opu alamo'o, you see, understand that life is a cycle. We could all learn from these fish.Sometimes we must hoist ourselves up waterfalls in our own lives, back to our origins, back to where we begin. "
6 " But,later, my parents explained that a man dining at a restaurant had secretly paid for our meal as a random act of kindness. He told the waiter it was because we looked like a really nice family, enjoying a meal together. He requested that they wait to bring our bill until he left, so we did not get a chance to thank him or even meet him. But that added to the sense of magic. He could have been anyone, and so he was everyone. The whole world seemed a more generous place. "
7 " When Kai calls me beautiful, I know he's talking about more than my appearance. Because he dosen't just see y outside layer, the way the rest of the world does. He peels back all my layers. He knows me, truly and deeply. He loved the little girl I was, who still lives on inside me , at my core. He knows all of me- all my flaws and insecurities and vulnerabilities- and he thinks I am beautiful. "
