Tarryn Fisher

“I'm afraid." Olivia to Caleb"Afraid of what?" Caleb."Of how vulnerable you make me." Olivia."I make you vulnerable because you love me. That's the price you pay for love, baby girl." Caleb.”

“You shouldn't have to convince anyone to choose you. There is no real choice in love.”

“There is a string that connects us that is not visible to the eye. Maybe every person has more than one soul they are connected to, and all over the world there are these invisible strings. Maybe the chances that you'll find each and every one of your soulmates is slim. But sometimes you're lucky enough to stumble across one. And you feel a tug. And it's not so much a choice to love them through their flaws and through your differences, but rather you love them without even trying. You love their flaws.”

“Even to your old age and grey hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have loved you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you[.]”

“You know that's not true. We have something, Helena. In another life, it would have been a beautiful something."That hurts. God, does it. I've seen that life. He doesn't even know what he's talking about. In his mind, I'm just some possibility that could have been, but in my mind, he's the only possibility. I step close to him, close enough to see the stubble on his cheeks. I reach up to touch it, and it scrapes against the tender side of my hand. Kit closes his eyes. "There's a house uptown on Washington ; we live there together in that life," I say softly. "Everything is green, green, green in our backyard. We have two children, a boy and a girl. She looks like you," I say. "But she acts like me." I carees his cheek because I know it's the last time I'm going to get to do it. Kit's eyes are open and storming. I run my teeth across my bottom lip before I continue. "In the summer, we make love outside, against the big wooden table that still holds our dinner dishes. And we talk about all the places we want to make love." I lick the tears from my lip where they are pooling. Running in a straight line down my cheeks, a leaky faucet. "And we're so happy, Kit. It's like a dream every day." I reach up on my tiptoes and kiss him softly on the lips, letting him taste my tears. He's staring at me so hard I want to crack. "But, it's just a dream, isn't it?”

“Women hold all the power. They should use it like a whip, not offer it up like a sacrifice.”

“Humans seek connection above all else, and we are willing to destroy things to attain it.”

“I was just a flat line until he came along. And maybe now I'm hurting. But isn't that what love is supposed to do? Make you feel, make you brave, make you look at yourself more carefully?”

“Love is illogical. You fall into it like a manhole. Then you're just stuck. You die in love more than you live in love.”

“I put the photo in an album called Mortifying Emotional Moments, and I title it Soggy Napkin Note. The last selfie I posted in there was of me on the day I graduated college. My perfectly made up face is happy ... relieved. I called that one: Sallie Mae Can Suck It.”

“Overbearing mothers usually give way to one of two things in their children: rebellion or passivity. In your case, the latter.”

“I can make you part of something great and beautiful and still portray you as the ugly thing you are”

“I think it's hard for you to fall in love because you like control, and you can't control what another person does or feels, so you keep all your cards.”

“Her next words took me by surprise. I lay as still as I could, barely breathing, afraid that if I moved she would stop speaking her heart.“My mom wanted six children. She only got me, and that sucks for her because I was a total weirdo.”“You were not,” I said.She twisted her head up to look at me.“I used to line my lips in black eyeliner and sit cross-legged on the kitchen table … meditating.”“Not that bad,” I said. “Crying out for attention.”“Okay, when I was twelve I started writing letters to my birth mother because I wanted to be adopted.”I shook my head. “Your childhood sucked, you wanted a new reality.”She snorted air through her nose. “I thought a mermaid lived in my shower drain, and I used to call her Sarah and talk to her.”“Active imagination,” I countered. She was becoming more insistent, her little body wriggling in my grip.“I used to make paper out of dryer lint.”“Nerdy.”“I wanted to be one with nature, so I started boiling grass and drinking it with a little bit of dirt for sugar.”I paused. “Okay, that’s weird.”“Thank you!” she said. Then, she got serious again. “My mom just loved me through all of it.”

“That's the most pathetic part of being a human, the emotions you don't ask for or want, they just rush you anyway.”

“Leah" Olivia says quietly, "if you point at me again I'm going to break that manicured finger right off your hand. Now turn around and smile, your daughter is waking up.”

“Le Tub is a Miami oceanside restaurant that uses old bath tubs and toilets as decoration. If you're really lucky, you get a table by the water where you can see the manatees as they swim by. Someone once told me that it was one of Oprah's favorite restaurants, but seriously, Oprah has a lot of favorite things--it all sounds like lies at this point.”