"We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly."
— Sam Keen

"Practice makes perfect, but nobody's perfect, so why practice?"
— Kurt Cobain

"Aria: I went to Hollis. Because I was looking for...you know. Her. She was teaching an art class, so I ran inside, grabbed a paintbrush, and painted a scarlet A across her chest. You know, like that woman in The Scarlet Letter? It was awesome. She didn't know what hit her. And then I said, 'Now everyone will know what you've done'.

Ella: Do you realize that Hester Prynne is supposed to be a sympathetic character?"
— Sara Shepard (Perfect)

"[Life]It is what you make it. If you think you can't change the world, then go on and follow the path already carved out for you. But there are other roads to choose, they're just harder to trudge through. Changing the world is'nt easy, but I sure as hell am going to keep trying. Are you?"
— Simone Elkeles Perfect Chemistry

"One of the things that makes me who I am is the loyalty I have to people I hold close to my heart."
— Simone Elkeles Perfect Chemistry

"There is still that singular perfection, and it's perfect in part because it seemed, at the time, so clearly to promise more."
— Michael Cunningham (The Hours)

"Life, it turns out, goes on. There is no cosmic rule that grants you immunity from the details just because you have come face-to-face with a catastrophe. The garbage can still overflow, the bills arrive in the mail, telemarketers, interrupt dinner."
— Jodi Picoult (Perfect Match:A Novel)

"Children of her type contrive the purest philosophies. Ada had worked out her own little system. Hardly a week had elapsed since Van’s arrival when he was found worthy of being initiated in her web of wisdom. An individual’s life consisted of certain classified things: "real things" which were unfrequent and priceless, simply "things" which formed the routine stuff of life; and "ghost things," also called "fogs," such as fever, toothache, dreadful disappointments, and death. Three or more things occurring at the same time formed a "tower," or, if they came in immediate succession, they made a "bridge." "Real towers" and "real bridges" were the joys of life, and when the towers came in a series, one experienced supreme rapture; it almost never happened, though. In some circumstances, in a certain light, a neutral "thing" might look or even actually become "real" or else, conversely, it might coagulate into a fetid "fog." When the joy and the joyless happened to be intermixed, simultaneously or along the ramp of duration, one was confronted with "ruined towers" and "broken bridges.""
— Vladimir Nabokov (Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle)

"It's not Brittany's face, not her smile, not even her eyes. All of that surface stuff made the world see her as beautiful, but it was the deeper stuff that made her different. It was the gentle way she wiped her sister's face, the way she took chemistry so seriously, the way she showed her love even when she knew what and who I was. I was about to do a drug deal, something she was adamantly againts, and she still loved me."
— Simone Elkeles Perfect Chemistry

""I'm losing control."-Brittany
"Mamacita, I've already lost it."-Alex "
— Simone Elkeles (Perfect Chemistry)

"I want to try making things right because picking up the pieces is way better than leaving tham the way they are."
— Simone Elkeles Perfect Chemistry

"“I think that you are an uptight, pony-owning, trickle-down-economics-loving, Scotch-on-the-rocks-drinking, my-wife-better-take-my-last-name sexist jerk!”"
— Julie James (Practice Makes Perfect)

"The bastard—no other name was necessary, from now on the man formerly known as J.D. would simply be called The Bastard, The Prick, or The Shithead."
— Julie James (Practice Makes Perfect)

"Envy, after all, comes from wanting something that isn't yours. But grief comes from losing something you've already had."
— Jodi Picoult (Perfect Match:A Novel)

"“Well, at least I’m not a stubborn, button-pushing, Prius-driving, chip-on-your-shoulder-holding, ‘stay-at-home-mom’-is-the-eighth-dirty-word-thinking feminazi!”"
— Julie James (Practice Makes Perfect)

"Holy fuck—would somebody please tell him why a massive photo of a penis was sitting front and center in the courtroom?"
— Julie James (Practice Makes Perfect)

"You don't think I'm going to deflower you under your father's roof, do you?"
— Amanda Ashley (Dead Perfect)

""Having to face him at a competency hearing is like getting to hell and finding out that the only food available is raw liver-insult added to injury.""
— Jodi Picoult (Perfect Match:A Novel)

"http://a4.vox.com/6a00e398a0ed8f000300fa... What if the one I choose to discount is one who has been truly hurt?"
— Jodi Picoult (Perfect Match: A Novel)

"Sweet Jesus.
It was The Delicious in the dark shirt and jeans."
— Julie James (Practice Makes Perfect)

"maybe you’re sleeping and I suppose I could just say this in the morning, but now I can’t sleep and I’m just lying here so I might as well get it over with, and well . . .I’m sorry about this afternoon, J.D. The first spill honestly was an accident, but the second . . . okay, that was completely uncalled for. I’m, um, happy to pay for the dry cleaning. And, well . . . I guess that’s it. Although you really might want to rethink leaving your jacket on your chair. I’m just saying. Okay, then. That’s what they make hangers for. Good. Fine. Good-bye.”

J.D. heard the beep, signaling the end of the message, and he hung up the phone. He thought about what Payton had said—not so much her apology, which was question-ably mediocre at best—but something else.

She thought about him while lying in bed.

Interesting.

Later that night, having been asleep for a few hours, J.D. shot up in bed

He suddenly remembered—her shoe.
Oops."
— Julie James (Practice Makes Perfect)

"J.D. nodded. Yes, yes, fine, thank you. Nice attitude, by the way. Like boss, like secretary."
— Julie James (Practice Makes Perfect)

"She looked for the deposition transcript she had dropped, she turned around and—

—the entire audience in the galley cried out in shock.

Unbeknownst to Payton, when she had fallen her skirt—those damn slim-fit skirts she liked so much—had torn at the seam and now gaped open, and sweet Jesus, she was wearing a thong and two tiny white butt cheeks peeked out from between the folds of her skirt—

J.D.’s jaw nearly hit the floor."
— Julie James (Practice Makes Perfect)

"Raise your hand if you had no idea you’d see so much nudity in one week of jury duty.”
Twelve hands flew straight into the air.
And unbelievably, Payton laughed."
— Julie James (Practice Makes Perfect)

"What was happening to them was that every bad time produced a bad feeling that in turn produced several more bad times and several more bad feelings, so that their life together became crowded with bad times and bad feelings, so crowded that almost nothing else could grow in that dark field. But then she had a feeling of peace one morning that lingered from the evening before spent sewing while he sat reading in the next room. And a day or two later, she had a feeling of contentment that lingered in the morning from the evening before when he kept her company in the kitchen while she washed the dinner dishes. If the good times increased, she thought, each good time might produce a good feeling that would in turn produce several more good times that would produce several more good feelings. What she meant was that the good times might multiply perhaps as rapidly as the square of the square, or perhaps more rapidly, like mice, or like mushrooms springing up overnight from the scattered spore of a parent mushroom which in turn had sprung up overnight with a crowd of others from the scattered spore of a parent, until her life with him with be so crowded with good times that the good times might crowd out the bad as the bad times had by now almost crowded out the good. "
— Lydia Davis (Varieties of Disturbance)

"One's first love is always perfect until one meets one's second love"
— Elizabeth Aston (The Exploits & Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy: A Novel)

"That settles it, no more books about vampire before bedtime."
— Amanda Ashley

"Practice makes perfect, But nothings perfect so why bother practicing?"
— Nicole

"J.D. scoffed at this. “Please—as if I’m worried about anything Payton has to say. What’s she going to do, give me another one of her little pissed-off hair flips?” He flung imaginary long hair off his shoulders, exaggerating. “I’ll tell you, one of these days I’m going to grab her by that hair and . . .” He gestured as if throttling someone.
Without breaking stride, he returned Tyler’s serve. The two smashed a few back and forth, concentrating on the game when—
“Is violence always part of your sexual fantasies?” Tyler interjected.
J.D. whipped around—
“Sexual—?”
—and got hit smack in the face with the squash ball. He toppled back and sprawled ungracefully across the court.
Tyler stepped over and twirled his racquet. “This is nice. We should talk like this more often.”"
— Julie James (Practice Makes Perfect)

"Score one for Team Kendall, Payton thought.
Not that it was a competition between them.
Not at all."
— Julie James (Practice Makes Perfect)

"“Then I should be able to say anything I want, right? Even the word ‘penis’?”
Laney sighed. “Do we have to do this right now?”
“You should try saying the word sometime.”
“I’ll pass, thank you.”
Payton shrugged. “Your choice, but I think you’d find it liberating. Everybody could use a good ‘penis’ now and then.”
Laney glanced nervously around the coffee shop. “People are listening.”
“Sorry—you’re right. Good rule of thumb: if you’re gonna throw out a ‘penis’ in a public place, it should be soft. Otherwise it attracts too much attention.”
The woman at the next table gaped at them."
— Julie James (Practice Makes Perfect)

"“I’m a bit of a novice myself.” She smiled. Then she turned back to Jasper. “And please, call me Payton.”
“Like one of my favorite quarterbacks,” Jasper grinned.
“Only with an a instead of an e. And slightly fewer yards in passing,” Payton said. Damn—now she’d already blown one of the three measly sports references she knew in the first two minutes.
Jasper laughed. “Slightly fewer yards in passing—I like that.” He turned to J.D., gesturing to Payton. “Where have you been hidin’ this girl, J.D.?”"
— Julie James (Practice Makes Perfect)

"“Lesbian?”
Payton turned around and saw J.D. standing there.
Maybe it was the wine. Maybe she was basking in the glow of their successful pitch to Gibson’s. Maybe it was her promise to Laney to be the “New Payton,” or maybe it was a combination of all those things. But Payton actually found herself smiling at J.D.
“It’s just an excuse, the lesbian thing,” she said."
— Julie James (Practice Makes Perfect)

"TEMPORARY INSANITY."
— Julie James (Practice Makes Perfect)

"Now anyone who has ever been on a blind date is well familiar with “The Moment”—that moment where you first walk into the bar or restaurant or coffee shop and scan the crowd and suddenly your heart stops and you say to yourself: oh, please—let it be him."
— Julie James (Practice Makes Perfect)

"Payton grinned. “You must be Chase.” As she extended her hand in introduction, she took the opportunity to give him a more thorough once-over.

He had dark wavy hair and warm brown eyes. Very Pat-rick Dempsey/McDreamy-esque. Good build, not terribly tall, maybe only five-ten-ish, but since Payton measured in at exactly five-three and one-third inch, she could work with this"
— Julie James (Practice Makes Perfect)