It seems to me that the experiences that stay with you, the things you’ll always remember, aren’t the ones you can force, or go looking for. I’ve always thought of those things as the ones that somehow find you.

It's a strange, surreal thing to watch an ideal crumble right in front of your eyes, and to know there's absolutely nothing you can do about it.

—Jessi Kirby in Golden

I'd give anything right now to go back, even just for a few moments, so I could pay more attention. Inscribe every detail of him, and of us together, onto my heart, where I could keep it safe always. Where even time couldn't erase it.

—Jessi Kirby in Things We Know by Heart

Sometimes a shock to the system is a good thing, you know? Like a reminder that you're alive.

—Jessi Kirby in Golden

It's terrifying to realize how much of your world is wrapped up in loving another person.

—Jessi Kirby in Things We Know by Heart

We’re all more than the person we show to everyone else. At least I hope so. Because I feel like there’s more to me than that. I just haven’t had the chance yet to show it.

—Jessi Kirby in Golden

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

—Douglas Adams

People should not judge failed love affairs as failed experiences but as part of the growth process. Something does not have to end well for it to have been one of the most valuable experiences of a lifetime.

—Ethel Person

I should let people in. If they leave, they leave. If I break, I break. It happens to everyone.

—Sarah Addison Allen in Garden Spells

It has always been part of basic human experience to live in a culture of wilderness. There has been no wilderness without some kind of human presence for several hundred thousand years. Nature is not a place to visit, it is home.

—Gary Snyder

Life is about experience. You can’t hold on to everything.

—Sarah Addison Allen in Garden Spells