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41 " Anyone can bend a judge's or jury's will with bravado, but to do it on paper--in black and white--that takes a particular kind of artistry. It's truth in poetry. "
― Rebecca Serle , In Five Years
42 " We are like constellations passing each other, seeing each other's light but in the distance. It feels impossible how much space there can be in this intimacy, how much privacy. And I think maybe that is what love is. Not the absence of space but the acknowledgement of it, the thing that lives between the parts, the thing that makes it possible not to be one, but to be different, to be two. "
43 " If you can reach out and hold the other person’s hand, does the distance matter? Is simply being able to see someone valuable? "
44 " But the thing about parallel tracks is you can be inches apart, or miles. And lately it feels like the width between David and me is extraordinary. We just didn’t notice because we were still looking at the same horizon. But it dawns on me that I want someone in my way. I want us to collide. "
45 " A kid zooms past us with a basketball, his mother sprinting after him. The city. Full and buzzy and unaware that somewhere, fifteen blocks south, tiny cells are multiplying in a plot to destroy the whole world. "
46 " need the morning. There’s something about being the first one awake that feels precious, rare. I feel accomplished before I’ve even had my first cup of coffee. The whole day is better. "
47 " We spent the entire four days on the outskirts. Eating dinner at cafés on the fringes of Montmartre. "
48 " They have the best eggs and croque monsieur on the planet—and their coffee is strong and rich. "
49 " To me the most interesting question of our human existence is: “How much is in our control, and how much is going to happen regardless of what we do?” I knew that Dannie would live that hour and it would be exactly the same as the hour she lives at the beginning of the book, meaning all of the same things would happen. But I also knew it would mean something entirely different than what she’d been anticipating. That, to me, is really the thesis of the novel: we can think we know what is coming, but we can never know what it will mean. "
50 " So be it, so let it be. "
51 " This experience does not fit in your life, you have not taken any steps to have it, and yet here it is. "
52 " I dab some MyChelle serum on my face, comforted by the smell, the familiarity. "
53 " We don’t know. We’re all grasping. We’re all pretending now. Pretending this was the hard part. Pretending it’s over and behind us. "
54 " You mistake love. You think it has to have a future in order to matter, but it doesn’t. It’s the only thing that does not need to become at all. It matters only insofar as it exists. "
55 " I see it all. The cascade of our friendship. The decades of time. The decades to come—more, even, without her. "
56 " Bay "
57 " You mistake love. You think it has to have a future in order to matter, but it doesn’t. It’s the only thing that does not need to become at all. It matters only insofar as it exists. Here. Now.Love doesn’t require a future. "
58 " In order to sort & file to my heart's content, I had to read into them a bit, & I fell in love with the organization, the way language - the pure truth in the words - was nonnegotiable. It was like poetry, but poetry with outcome, poetry with concrete meaning - with actionable power. "
59 " I was her protector. That she was flighty and irresponsible and frivolous. That it was my job to protect her. That I was the strong one, counterbalancing her weakness, her whimsy. But I was wrong. I wasn’t the strong one, she was. Because this is what it feels like—to take a risk, to step out of line, to make decisions not based on fact but on feeling. And it hurts. It feels like a tornado raging inside my soul. It feels like I may not survive it. "
60 " Here was this girl, my best friend, who fit in this faraway land like a hand to a glove. I didn't, and yet she still took me with her. She was always taking me with her, wanting me to be a part of her wide, open life. How could I feel anything but lucky? "