One True Loves

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

When I lived in Los Angeles, I never savored warm nights. You don’t savor things that last forever. It is one of the reasons I moved back to Massachusetts.

I would learn later that almost everything my parents told me in this regard turned out to be true. College really did “fly by.” I did change my mind about Keanu Reeves “sooner or later.” I was on the other side of thirty “before I knew it.”

But once I had put enough distance between myself and where I grew up, I started to see its beauty. I started to see it the way outsiders do—maybe because I had become an outsider.

Our friendship had been a long-distance one since we went off to college. But I never met another woman who meant to me what she did. No one else could make me laugh like she could. So my oldest friend remained my best friend, despite however many miles kept us apart, and it was for that reason that I made her my maid of honor.

I had predicated my life on the idea that I wanted to see everywhere extraordinary, but I’d come to realize that extraordinary is everywhere.

the only thing that shocked me more than realizing it was realizing I had never realized it before.

I wanted to stand high enough that if I fell, it’d kill me. This is not the same thing as wanting to die.

When you lose someone you love, it’s hard to imagine that you’ll ever feel better. That, one day, you’ll manage to be in a good mood simply because the weather is nice or the barista at the coffee shop on the corner remembered your order. But it does happen. If you’re patient and you work at it.

Hollow and empty are terrible ways to feel when you’re used to being full of joy. But it’s not so bad when you’re used to feeling full of pain.

You are happier to have known him than you are sad to have lost him.

We’re like the Tweedledee and Tweedledum of social interaction.”

“I feel like my entire body is an open wound and I’m standing next to someone that may or may not pour salt all over me.”