A Pessimist's Guide to Love (Heartsong, #2)

by Jennifer Hartmann

“Point is, we all have regrets, and sometimes we crucify ourselves enough, and that’s all the punishment we need. All we can do is learn from them and try to be better.

Guilt is powerful—I don’t think it ever goes away. It changes a person.”

He’s afraid to love because he’s afraid to lose. Once you lose something precious, it changes you. Sometimes you hold onto things too tightly and they crumble in your hands, and sometimes you don’t hold onto them at all. At the end of the day, you’re still losing.

Songs are funny like that—you might not hear them play for years, but you still remember every word. And I think it’s because songs are more than words, more than notes, more than verses and choruses. Words fade and scatter over time, but songs tied to life’s most precious memories live inside of us forever.

“Do you really believe I’ll uncover your flawed pieces and think for a second they won’t be pieces worth keeping?”

There’s no reason for suffering, but there’s always a reason to keep going.

Is rock bottom a place, a feeling, a purgatory? Do the rocks and shrapnel cut just as deep?

I think about Emma’s last diary entry, about all the things she learned from love. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that it always comes with an unsavory side of heartache. There’s no joy without grief, no fulfillment without loss, no laughter without pain. Yin and yang. That’s just the way the world works, and I guess it’s up to us to weigh the good and the bad. How much suffering are we willing to commit to, for the sake of one good day? One perfect kiss? A single moment of bliss?

I haven’t moved on, but I’ve moved forward. And I think that’s all we can ever do. We store the past away, seal it up tight and carry it with us, but we don’t live in it anymore. We learn from it. That’s how we keep going,”