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1 " A birthday is a very big thing. It should be big from the minute you wake up. It should be such a big thing—all day long—that you fall down into sleep that night all worn out from so much bigness. You get a present with paper on it, you can open that in just a minute. And then, depending on what's inside, a birthday can sort of lose its shine. And then what do you got? No birthday. No big thing. So what I wanted for my sweet little boy was a birthday that would be big and last all day long.Nobody should be able to mess with that, or make it not safe. "
― Catherine Ryan Hyde , Love in the Present Tense
2 " kitchen "
3 " If I was to kill everybody who didn't love me and never would, wouldn't be nobody left on the planet? "
4 " Do you know what forever love is? Pearl taught me. It's when you love somebody so much that no matter what happens that'll never change. Like even if you're gone. It's still the same. Even if you die. You die, but not the love. Not forever love. Know what I mean? "
5 " If it takes you apart, that’s not love. Love puts you back together. "
6 " When I dreamed about the time you would actually sleep with me, I thought there'd be some sleeping involved. "
7 " I think about the time Mitch asked me why I was such a happy little guy. I was five years old. Pearl had been gone a few weeks. I thought really hard for an answer even though I think he'd gone about his business without expecting one.Then I said, "I think it's because my mother loves me so much."He gave me this look of utter pity, like I was the bravest kid in the world. He missed the point completely, you know? "
8 " There is no boogeyman. Just a bunch of flawed humans, some more flawed than others, but more or less cut from the same human mold. "
9 " mean. The biggest regret of his life has been having no last name, no pictures of Pearl, and no way of knowing who his father was. Oh, by the way . . . "
10 " Sometimes we think we know what to fear. We never turn our back on it. Then something else we never thought of comes along. I wonder if what finally caught her in the end was something she feared all that time, or something she never would have thought of. "
11 " What could I possibly have done to bring this on? What can I possibly do to stop it? I thought, is there anybody besides me whose mother welcomed them into the world with a face full of joyful love? I mean, one single person besides myself? "
12 " his shoes and ran down onto the part of the sand where it’s all wet and shiny, waiting for another wave to come in. When it did, it splashed up onto "
13 " A beam of light sweeps down through the skylight in the roof and makes him look like the chosen one, which I often suspect he just might be. In that deep place where I believe almost nothing, I am tempted to believe that - a light, irritating tickle of belief. "
