The Book of Two Ways

by Jodi Picoult

If you don’t tell a man that you came to him with a missing piece, he will never know to look for it.

It was when you moved in me, when you cried out my name, that I found the color I’d been searching for.

The opposite of love, you think, isn’t hate. It’s complacency.

WHEN YOU LOSE someone you love, there is a tear in the fabric of the universe. It’s the scar you feel for, the flaw you can’t stop seeing. It’s the tender place that won’t bear weight.

“Love is messy,” I tell her. “Sometimes you hurt the people you love. And sometimes you love the people who hurt you.”

Maybe this is all love is: twin routes of pain and pleasure. Maybe the miracle isn’t where we wind up, but that we get there at all.