"Think about it this way: While being married is about becoming the WIFE you are meant to be, being single allows you to focus on becoming the WOMAN you were born to be."

"I tilt my head slightly to one side, taking in her blue sleeveless dress which ends a few inches above her knees. She looks exquisite. Definitely perfect for dessert.“I know what I want to eat and it’s not lemon cake.” I say thickly.Heat flares up in her eyes and I know the cake has been forgotten.She wants to be dessert."

"Love is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision."

"She just keeps kissing my scars. Every scar. She knows about them all. She watched them all appear and heal. Sophie's lips against me make every punch, every kick, every wound, every scar worth it."

"They had met at a club fifteen years before, Etta and Magnus. He had convinced her to dance with him, and she said she had been in love by the end of the song. He told her he had been in love before the beginning."

"A romance book is designed to tell you something about love–its ability to endure, forgive, go the extra mile, care about someone, put someone else first."

"I bet that guy was as obsessed with Sarah as I am with this other girl, and I bet he promised himself never to hurt her, just like I've been doin' - and look what he's done to her. He's left her a crumpled mess, lyin' on her bed all the time."

"Some ghost of myself still lived back in the days when we'd shared a bed and talked of the future. But that love we'd had and those selves we'd been were gone, placed in a box like old photographs and letters you'd never read again."