"Like some wines our love could neither mature nor travel."
— Graham Greene (The Comedians)

"Because you can never go from going out to being friends, just like that. It's a lie. It's just something that people say they'll do to take the permanence out of a breakup. And someone always takes it to mean more than it does, and then is hurt even more when, inevitably, said ‘friendly' relationship is still a major step down from the previous relationship, and it's like breaking up all over again. But messier."
— Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)

"The sweetest part of being a couple is sharing your life with someone else.
But my life, evidently, had not been good enough to share."
— Charlaine Harris

"How can I be reasonable? To me our love was everything and you were my whole life. It is not very pleasant to realize that to you it was only an episode."
— W. Somerset Maugham (The Painted Veil)

"You think that you are an iconoclast, but you’re not. You just move, or replace what you cannot have. If you fail at something, you retreat into something else. Nothing changes you.... I left you because I knew I could never change you. You would stand in the room so still sometimes, as if the greatest betrayal of yourself would be to reveal one more inch of your character."
— Michael Ondaatje (The English Patient)

"I knew that somewhere God was laughing. He had taken the other half of my heart, the one person who knew me better than I knew myself, and He had done what nothing else could do. By bringing us together, He had set into motion the one thing that could tear us apart."
— Jodi Picoult (Harvesting the Heart)

"Isn't it funny how the memories you cherish before a breakup can become your worst enemies afterwards? The thoughts you loved to think about, the memories you wanted to hold up to the light and view from every angle--it suddenly seems a lot safer to lock them in a box, far from the light of day and throw away the key. It's not an act of bitterness. It's an act if self-preservation. It's not always a bad idea to stay behind the window and look out at life instead, is it?"
— Allyson Braithwaite Condie (First Day)

"I think you still love me, but we can’t escape the fact that I’m not enough for you. I knew this was going to happen. So I’m not blaming you for falling in love with another woman. I’m not angry, either. I should be, but I’m not. I just feel pain. A lot of pain. I thought I could imagine how much this would hurt, but I was wrong. "
— Haruki Murakami (South of the Border, West of the Sun)

"a) he's late.
b) he's acting like an asshole and blowing me off.
c)he's gotten into a horrible car crash that's left dead.

The most likely answer is A. (We went to prom together, and the limo had to wait in his driveway for half an hour. At the end of the night, we got charged for an extra hour. He- read: his parents- paid for it, but still.)"
— Lauren Barnholdt (Two-way Street)