Mirella Muffarotto

“But you’re right about one thing: he’s my best friend. I know him very well, and no matter what he said or did tonight, I’ve never seen him act this way with another girl. No one,” he repeated, “except you.”

“I tried to hate you, to forgive you, all just to forget you, but I'm only capable of loving you. You're tattooed onto my skin, and the more I try to erase you, the deeper you sink in.”

“There are people in my life who count more than playing soccer in Serie A”

“He could no longer pretend not to have been brought to his knees by her blows, and he could no longer avoid the sentiments that his heart forced him to feel.”

“He’s not yet realized that by giving away nothing but barefaced lies he’s come to wither and rot inside. But she’s still looking for him into the void of his cold heart.”

“Her heart was telling her to trust him, but it wouldn’t be the first time that that foolish muscle, there in the middle of her chest, had betrayed her.”

“If she had looked into his eyes at that very moment she would have seen the inferno that she had thrown him into.”

“Matteo lived inside her like a memory that paradoxically stopped the pain and which she could never get enough of... because there was, and never would be, anything that was like him. Wherever she went, whatever she did, he was the only thing she truly loved, and which she sadly no longer had.”

“She had feared the worst, and even though at that very moment she would have liked to wring her neck, she was happy to learn that suicide was not one of the stupid things that Eve had in her repertoire. Suicide made no sense: situations change, people change, and the problems of today may find a solution tomorrow. So long as you’re in the game you can change the final score, but if you take yourself out of it, you’ll never know how it might have ended, and you let the world win.”

“Marika could feel herself cocking the trigger of a loaded gun and pointing it at herself, because the truth could be too shocking a revelation, something that would shake their lives to the core... but lies were just a dead-end alleyway that offered no way out.”

“Marika was a book nerd and had a TBR pile taller than her. She was a sucker for YA”

“You two are bound to one another. You always have been … and you can't run away from what you are. No matter where you go, your feelings for her are going to follow you.”

“Most people think that love doesn’t stand the test of time – that it is eternal only as long as it lasts – but love is an unquenchable flame. It is only the fires of momentary desire that burn too fast and go out far too quickly without leaving behind a single trace.”

“The French poet Mallarmé and, after him, Borges, claimed that “everything in the world exists to end up in a book,” and if that’s true, and that even every man is a book, Federico was undoubtedly created by the pen of Keats or some other tormented Romantic poet; while Matteo was pure passion, like Shakespeare’s Romeo: spontaneous, intense, and impetuously real.”

“Everything around her was in a fog; the intense light that always shone in his aqua blue eyes was the only thing in focus, but it was suddenly unknown... different... almost embarrassing.”

“She was afraid of giving in to that overwhelming, absolute, unconditional love, a love that had shown her the route to heaven, but which had also taught her how much one could suffer, to the point where even the sound of your own tears became deafening.”

“I love everything about you. And I’ve felt that way for such a long time that it could last forever.”

“But how can I let him just walk away with a smile on my face and a slap on his back when every cell in my body is tied painfully to him, and I can’t breathe when I think of him being away from me?!”

“I’ve always liked you, from the first moment I saw you at the Pigafetta Stadium.” He kept his distance because he wanted her too much. “And ever since that day, I knew that you were in love with another guy, and that he would sooner or later feel the same way I did.” Cutting ties with her was excruciatingly painful. “I just hoped that he would be stupid enough to let me have you,” he gasped. “But he wasn’t.”

“It's absurd how crazy love can make you......but even more absurd how stupid jealousy can make you!”