The Book of Two Ways

by Jodi Picoult

Because if there is a garden of maybes, you are the invasive plant I can’t ever get rid of.

I shall kiss [her] in the presence of everyone, That they might understand my love. She is the one who has stolen my heart— When she looks at me it is refreshment. That piece of limestone was the only thing I took with me from Egypt, when I left.

I guess that’s the part no one ever tells you. You can love someone so much your teeth ache, so much that it feels like he is carrying your heart in his own rib cage, but none of it matters if you can’t find a practical way to be together. It’s like learning that you would be immortal if you could breathe nitrogen, but knowing you are bound to the oxygen of Earth.

You wonder when the core of love changed from passion to compassion.

You trust someone who makes space for you in his or her life … so much so that if you leave, they will feel the absence. You give someone your vulnerable, unshelled heart wrapped in a question: What will you do with it?