But I have learned that you make your own happiness, that part of going for what you want means losing something else. And when the stakes are high, the losses can be that much greater.

Love and friendship. They are what make us who we are, and what can change us, if we let them.

Songs and smells will bring you back to a moment in time more than anything else. It's amazing how much can be conjured with a few notes of a song or a solitary whiff of a room. A song you didn't even pay attention to at the time, a place that you didn't even know had a particular smell. I wonder what will someday bring back Dex and our few months together. Maybe the sound of Dido's voice. Maybe the scent of the Aveda shampoo I've been using all summer.

Life's not black-and-white. Sometimes the ends justifies the means.

His words are like the sound of a needle dragging across a record. A sinking, sickening feeling washes over me. This is why you should never, ever get your hopes up. This is why you should see the glass as half empty. So, when the whole things spills, you aren't as devastated.

Things certainly aren't the way you imagine them when you're a kid and dreaming big dreams about what your life as a grown-up will look like.

Some things will never be okay.

That either (a) she uses children to hide her real adult emotions, or (b) she is still a child herself.

Some thinks will never be okay.