"Long distance is hard. You have to trust that as you each change on your own, your relationship will also change along with you. It takes hope, good humor, and idealism. It takes a massive dose of courage to protect the relationship at all odds. It is hard, but worth it. You'll both be stronger as a result."

"I wanted to see the place where Margaret grew to what she is, even at the worst time of all, when I had no hope of ever calling her mine."

"If you follow the will of God, you know that in spite of all the terrible things that happen to you, you will never lose a final refuge. You know that the foundation of the world is love, so that even when no human being can or will help you, you may go on, trusting in the One that loves you."

"I think sometimes when we find love we pretend it away, or ignore it, or tell ourselves we’re imagining it. Because it is the most painful kind of hope there is."

"Faith goes up the stairs that love has built and looks out the windows which hope has opened."

"I want him to love me as much as I love him."

"And the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion. And whenever those twin poisonous flowers began to sprout in the parched land of that field, Mariam uprooted them. She uprooted them and ditched them before they took hold."

"You said you didn't want to get involved with me,that one of us would get hurt and how you couldn't bear it. Well that just isn't good enough..Look what happens to people just living their lives. They get hurt, it's not fair they get hurt but they do, all the time, no matter how careful they are. Somebody can just just come along and hurt them, for no stupid reason.."

"I really don't even know you, and yet, in my life, you are forever entangled; to my history, inextricably bound."

"To wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect"

"I know we're not saints or virgins or lunatics; we know all the lust and lavatory jokes, and most of the dirty people; we can catch buses and count our change and cross the roads and talk real sentences. But our innocence goes awfully deep, and our discreditable secret is that we don't know anything at all, and our horrid inner secret is that we don't care that we don't."

"The only way of knowing a person is to love them without hope."

"Sometimes good things fall apart, so better things can fall together."

"Everybody has a home team: It’s the people you call when you get a flat tire or when something terrible happens. It’s the people who, near or far, know everything that’s wrong with you and love you anyways. These are the ones who tell you their secrets, who get themselves a glass of water without asking when they’re at your house. These are the people who cry when you cry. These are your people, your middle-of-the-night, no-matter-what people."

"Hope is not about proving anything. It's about choosing to believe this one thing, that love is bigger than any grim, bleak shit anyone can throw at us."

"I’m here not because I am supposed to be here, or because I’m trapped here, but because I’d rather be with you than anywhere else in the world."

"All of sudden, this shooting star went by, and all I could think was that they were listening to us somehow."

"You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know."

"How far would you go to keep the hope of love alive?"

"ur be the things I am wiser to know:Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.Four be the things I'd been better without:Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.Three be the things I shall never attain:Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.Three be the things I shall have till I die:Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye."

"I mean, at the end of the day, what the hell does it matter who I end up with if it can't be you?"

"Yes, I decided, a man can truly change. The events of the past year have taught me much about myself, and a few universal truths. I learned, for instance, that while wounds can be inflicted easily upon those we love, it's often much more difficult to heal them. Yet the process of healing those wounds provided the richest experience of my life, leading me to believe that while I've often overestimated what I could accomplish in a day, I had underestimated what I could do in a year. But most of all, I learned that it's possible for two people to fall in love all over again, even when there's been a lifetime of disappointment between them."