Dash & Lily's Book of Dares (Dash & Lily, #1)

by Rachel Cohn

I had always felt that mittens were a few steps back on the evolutionary scale—why, I wondered, would we want to make ourselves into a less agile version of a lobster?

“Being alone has nothing to do with how many people are around”?

It was one of those moments when you feel the future so much that it humbles the present.

We are reading the story of our lives As though we were in it, As though we had written it.

But isn’t this a dance? Isn’t all of this a dance? Isn’t that what we do with words? Isn’t that what we do when we talk, when we spar, when we make plans or leave it to chance? Some of it’s choreographed. Some of the steps have been done for ages. And the rest—the rest is spontaneous. The rest has to be decided on the floor, in the moment, before the music ends.

I was attempting to write the story of my life. It wasn’t so much about plot. It was much more about character.

‘A dream deferred is a dream denied.’

The important people in our lives leave imprints. They may stay or go in the physical realm, but they are always there in your heart, because they helped form your heart. There’s no getting over that.”

“I mean, what if love isn’t a yes-or-no question? It’s not either you’re in love or you’re not. I mean, aren’t there different levels? And maybe these things, like words and expectations and whatever, don’t go on top of the love. Maybe it’s like a map, and they all have their own place, and then when you see it from the sky—whoa.”

when people say right person, wrong time, or wrong person, right time, it’s usually a cop-out. They think that fate is playing with them. That we’re all just participants in this romantic reality show that God gets a kick out of watching. But the universe doesn’t decide what’s right or not right. You do. Yes, you can theorize until you’re blue in the face whether something might have worked at another time, or with someone else. But you know what that leaves you?”