You know someone's right for you when the things they don't have to say are even more important than the things they do.

Someone real," I hear myself saying. "Someone who never has to pretend, and who I never have to pretend around. Someone who's smart, but knows how to laugh at himself. Someone who would listen to a symphony and start to cry, because he understands music can be too big for words. Someone who knows me better than I know myself. Someone I want to talk to first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Someone I feel like I've known my whole life, even if I haven't.

The first time someone I loved left me behind...I didn't know how my family would balance. We had been such a sturdy little end table, four solid legs. I was sure we would now be off-kilter, always unstable. Until one day I looked more closely, and realized that we had simply become a stool.

For better or for worse, music is the language of memory. It is also the language of love.

I think that you can love more than one person in a lifetime. There's the one who teaches you what love is, even if it doesn't last. … And then there's the one who makes you a better human than you were, even as you do the same form him. … And then there's the last one ... The one that you never get enough time with. But who sees you through to the end.

It was no coincidence, that fear could move a person to extremes, just as seamlessly as love. They were the conjoined twins of emotion: If you didn't know what was at stake to lose, you had nothing to fight for.

I lean against my sister's shoulder. "I thought lightning wasn't supposed to strike in the same place twice.""Sure it does," Izzy tells me. "But only if you're too dumb to move.

males conspicuously leaving their mark to let others know where they weren't welcome.

because in the past words have only driven them apart.