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“Everybody is a main character to someone,” Bailey theorized, winding his way through the busy hall and out the nearest exit into the November afternoon. “There are no minor characters.
Lost or Alone? Ambrose said alone, and Fern responded, “I would much rather be lost with you than alone without you, so I choose lost with a caveat.” Ambrose responded, “No caveats,” to which Fern replied, “Then lost, because alone feels permanent, and lost can be found.”
Nobody or Nowhere? Fern: I’d rather be nobody at home than somebody somewhere else. Ambrose: I’d rather be nowhere. Being nobody when you’re expected to be somebody gets old.
Ambrose: Everybody who is somebody becomes nobody the moment they fail.
Before or After? Fern: Before, anticipation is usually better than the real thing. Ambrose: After. The real thing, when done right, is always better than a daydream.
Right now he just felt tired. He thought about losing. If he lost, would it all just go away?
“It’s hard to come to terms with the fact that you aren’t ever going to be loved the way you want to be loved.”
If God makes all our faces, did he laugh when he made me? Does he make the legs that cannot walk and eyes that cannot see?
“For the same reason He was born in a lowly manger, born to an oppressed people. If He had been beautiful or powerful, people would have followed him for that alone—they would have been drawn to him for all the wrong reasons.”
When he wasn’t in pain, he was in a fog from the painkillers. The fog was a relief, but it frightened him too, because lurking in the fog was reality. And reality was a monster with gleaming red eyes and long arms that pulled him toward the yawning black hole that made up its body.
Kites or Balloons? Fern had said kites because if she were a kite she could fly, but someone would always be holding onto her. Ambrose had said balloons: “I like the idea of flying away and letting the wind take me. I don’t think I want anyone holding onto me.”
“Love is not love Which alters when alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: Oh, no, it is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests and is never shaken.”
Maybe no one had been with him in his darkest hours because they were stumbling around in their own.
He might be hiding but she was through seeking Ambrose Young.
It’s hard to stay angry with someone who loves you.
“‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.’”
“I guess it means we don’t understand everything, and we’re not going to. Maybe the whys aren’t answered here. Not because there aren’t answers, but because we wouldn’t understand the answers if we had them.”
Maybe someday, as the knots became unraveled, this moment would wrap around him, tying him to her. Or maybe her love would simply loosen the strings, freeing him to walk away.
“I have no pride left, Ambrose!” Bailey said. “No pride. But it was my pride or my life. I had to choose. So do you. You can have your pride and sit here and make cupcakes and get old and fat and nobody will give a damn after a while. Or you can trade that pride in for a little humility and take your life back.”
Death is easy. Living is the hard part.
“Because terrible things happen to everyone, Brosey. We’re all just so caught up in our own crap that we don’t see the shit everyone else is wading through.”
Books allow you to be whoever you want to be, to escape yourself for a while.
Fern didn’t think she was good enough for you then, and you don’t think you’re good enough for her now. And both of you are wrong . . . and so stupid!
“Have you ever stared at a painting so long that the colors blur and you can’t tell what you’re looking at anymore? There’s no form, face, or shape—just color, just swirls of paint?”
“I think people are like that. When you really look at them, you stop seeing a perfect nose or straight teeth. You stop seeing the acne scar or the dimple in the chin. Those things start to blur, and suddenly you see them, the colors, the life inside the shell, and beauty takes on a whole new meaning.”
He was partially blind, but in spite of that, maybe because of that, he was seeing things more clearly than he ever had before.
She liked the option of flying without the responsibility of saving the world.
“How did you know I needed you?” Fern whispered in broken tones. “Because I needed you,” Ambrose confessed without artifice, his voice thick with heartache.
“Think about it. There isn’t heartache if there hasn’t been joy. I wouldn’t feel loss if there hadn’t been love. You couldn’t take my pain away without removing Bailey from my heart. I would rather have this pain now than never have known him. I just have to keep reminding myself of that.”
“But I don’t want you to take care of me, Fern. Okay? Caring about someone doesn’t mean taking care of them. Do you understand?” “Sometimes it does,” she whispered, protesting. “Yeah. Sometimes it does. But not this time. Not with me.”
“Shakespeare said, ‘The robbed that smiles steals something from the thief.’”
“I don’t think we get answers to every question. We don’t get to know all the whys. But I think we will look back at the end of our lives, if we do the best we can, and we will see that the things that we begged God to take from us, the things we cursed him for, the things that made us turn our backs on him or any belief in him, are the things that were the biggest blessings, the biggest opportunities for growth.”
We’re born, we suffer, we see people we love suffer, we die. It just all seemed so . . . so pointless. So cruel.
“Sometimes beauty, or lack thereof, gets in the way of really knowing someone.
“Ambrose, Fern already sees who you really are. That’s why she loves you.”
“I need you, Fern. I’m not going to lie. I need you. But I don’t need you the same way Bailey did. I need you because it hurts when we’re apart. I need you because you make me hopeful. You make me happy. But I don’t need you to shave me or brush my hair or wipe syrup off my nose.”
“I love you Fern. And I want you to marry me.” “You do?” Fern squealed. “I do. It doesn’t get better than Fern Taylor.”
She was the daughter of Joshua and Rachel, cousin of Bailey, lover of Ambrose. And she wouldn’t trade places with anyone.
And sometimes they met somewhere in between and lost themselves in each other for a couple of days, making the most of every second, because seconds became minutes and minutes became precious when life could be taken in less than a breath.
“True beauty, the kind that doesn’t fade or wash off, takes time. It takes pressure. It takes incredible endurance. It is the slow drip that makes the stalactite, the shaking of the Earth that creates mountains, the constant pounding of the waves that breaks up the rocks and smooths the rough edges. And from the violence, the furor, the raging of the winds, the roaring of the waters, something better emerges, something that would otherwise never exist. “And so we endure. We have faith that there is purpose. We hope for things we can’t see. We believe that there are lessons in loss, power in
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