Stephanie Perkins

“I'm sorry," he says."What? Why?""You're fixing everything I set down." He nods at my hands, which are readjusting the elephant. "It wasn't polite of me to come in and start touching your things.""Oh, it's okay," I say quickly, letting go of the figurine. "You can touch anything of mine you want." would be so bad.”

“Welcome to Paris, Anna. I'm glad you've come.”

“If I weren't standing next to your boyfriend, I'd be tempted to ask you out myself."She blushes, and St. Clair bounds inside the box office and wrestles her into a hug. "Miiiiiiiiine!" he says."Cut it out." Anna pushes him off, laughing. "You'll get fired. And then I'll have to support your sorry arse for the rest of our lives.”

“I look at you, and I think about you, and ... I don't know. No one has ever confounded me the way you do.”

“What...what about when I'm married?”“We'll buy a cot. Your husband can sleep on that when he visits.”

“Phones are distracting. The internet is distracting.The way he looked at you? He wasn't distracted. He was consumed.”

“..the thing about depression. When I feel it deeply, I don’t want to let it go. Itbecomes a comfort. I want to cloak myself under its heavy weight and breathe it into my lungs. I wantto nurture it, grow it, cultivate it. It’s mine. I want to check out with it, drift asleep wrapped in itsarms and not wake up for a long, long time.”

“I doubted myself, and that made me doubt you. But you weren’t the problem. You were never the problem. I should have trusted you, but I didn’t, because I couldn’t trust myself.”

“I didn't know it was possible to simultaneously hate and ache for someone.”

“They blinked in the dusk of the setting sun, a reminder that light was a recurring state.”

“Because that's the thing about depression. When I feel it deeply, I don't want to let it go. It becomes a comfort. I want to cloak myself under its heavy weight and breathe it into my lungs. I want to nurture it, grow it, cultivate it. It's mine. I want to check out with it, drift asleep wrapped in its arms and not wake up for a long, long time.”

“Yes, St. Claire. I like you. But I can't say it aloud, because he's my friend. And friends don't let other friends make drunken declarations and expect them to act upon them the next day”

“I mean . . . I don't know. I don't know what I want to do, or who I want to be, or where I want to live. I don't know. I like reading about adventure, sure, but I also like doing it from the safety of home. But what is home, besides a quilt-covered bed? Where is it?”

“For the two of us, home isn't a place. It is a person. And we are finally home.”

“He’s so close, yet so far away.” – Anna”

“But that's not quite right either.I miss Paris, but it's not home. It's more like... I miss this. This warmth over the telephone. Is it possible for home to be a person and not a place? Bridgette used to be home to me. Maybe St. Clair is my new home.I mull this over as our voices grow tired and we stop talking. We just keep each other company. My breath. His breath. My breath. His breath.I could never tell him, but it's true.This is home. The two of us.”

“I'm saying I'm in love with you! I've been in love with you this whole bleeding year!”

“The only French word I know is oui, which means “yes,” and only recently did I learn it’s spelled o-​u-​i and not w-​e-​e.”

“Life isn’t about what you get, it’s about what you DO with what you get.”

“Is it possible for home to be a person and not a place?”