Danielle

“I often wonder what our responsibility is to other people, how much we owe them. Whose job is it to look out for our own happiness. Us, or the people who love us? It's both, of course. We owe ourselves and we owe each other. But in what order? As I look at Jake sitting across from me I feel the desire to protect him palpably - I feel it down deep in my bones. And then I consider something else, something that is hard to look at but impossible, now, to ignore. I wonder if I've been seeing that desire - honoring it, recognizing it - and calling it love. Protection and love are not the same thing. Love says, I will try and I will fail. Love says, Despite. Love says, And yet and yet and yet.”
― Rebecca Serle, Expiration Dates

“The thing no one ever wants to say about dating is this: It’s hard to be real, sure. It’s harder to let someone else be.”
― Rebecca Serle, Expiration Dates

“I was fully devoted to it, and now I’m not. I think if I’d become a professional, I would likely have fallen out of love with it anyway. It isn’t a sadness, but a joy, that we don’t do the same things for the length of our lives.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“There's a warmth to this relationship with Jake, a comfort that I've never really felt or known before. But sometimes I'm afraid it means I'm somehow fading - that all the bright and brilliant aspects of myself are diminishing in this cocoon. That I will not have the sparkle I once had - that all my edges are being worn down in this intimacy.”
― Rebecca Serle, Expiration Dates