Jonathan Tropper citations

“… you realize that you don't understand yourself any better than you understand anyone else.”

“Everyone always wants to know how you can tell when it's true love, and the answer is this: when the pain doesn't fade and the scars don't heal, and it's too damned late.”

“You have to look at what you have right in front of you, at what it could be, and stop measuring it against what you've lost. I know this to be wise and true, just as I know that pretty much no one can do it.”

“It would be a terrible mistake to go through life thinking that people are the sum total of what you see.”

“We all start out so damn sure, thinking we've got the world on a string. If we ever stopped to think about the infinite number of ways we could be undone, we'd never leave our bedrooms.”

“Even under the best of circumstances, there's just something so damn tragic about growing up.”

“You're terrified of being alone. Anything you do now will be motivated by that fear. You have to stop worrying about finding love again. It will come when it comes. Get comfortable with being alone. It will empower you.”

“You never know when it will be the last time you'll see your father, or kiss your wife, or play with your little brother, but there's always a last time. If you could remember every last time, you'd never stop grieving.”

“And I just want to tell you, at some point it doesn’t matter who was right and who was wrong. At some point, being
angry is just another bad habit, like smoking, and you keep poisoning
yourself without thinking about it.”

“Childhood feels so permanent, like it's the entire world, and then one day it's over and you're shoveling wet dirt onto your father's coffin, stunned at the impermanence of everything.”

“I loved her for so long. Our past trails behind us like a comet's tail, the future stretched out before us like the universe. Things happen. People get lost and love breaks.”

“We are injured and angry, scared and sad. Some families, like some couples, become toxic to each other after prolonged exposure.”

“Phillip is the Paul McCartney of our family: better-looking than the rest of us, always facing a different direction in pictures, and occasionally rumored to be dead.”

“You have to look at what you have right in front of you, at what it could be, and stop measuring it against what you've lost.”

“Love made us partners in narcissism, and we talked ceaselessly about how close we were, how perfect our connection was, like we were the first people in history to ever get it exactly right.”

“At some point, being angry is just another bad habit, like smoking, and you keep poisoning yourself without thinking about it.”

“I’m living in separate universes, and I have no idea where I actually belong.”

“Sometimes it’s heartbreaking to see your siblings as the people they’ve become. Maybe that’s why we all stay away from each other as a matter of course.”

“Forgiveness has its comforts, but it can never give you back what you've lost.”

“That's the thing about life; everything feels so permanent, but you can disappear in an instant.”

“It's hard to imagine her ever having felt lost, but it's impossible to know the people your parents were before they were your parents.”

“She was smart and funny and vulnerable and just so goddamned beautiful, the kind of beautiful that was worth being shot down over.”

“I've never been shot, but this probably what it feels like, that second of nothingness right before the pain catches up to the bullet.”

“And even if you didn't fall in love in the eighties, in your mind it will feel like the eighties, all innocent and airbrushed, with bright colors and shoulder pads and Pat Benetar or the Cure on the soundtrack.”

“Fate already warned us to pack it in. We just didn’t hear it in time.”

“We don't stop loving people just because we hate them, but we don't stop hating them either.”

“A problem is something to solve,” Phillip says. “If there’s no solution, it’s not a problem, so stop treating it like one.”

“I keep waiting for the universe to decide things for me, and the thing is, the universe has better things to do.”

“I blame Hollywood for skewing perspectives. Life is just a big romantic comedy to them, and if you meet cute, happily ever-after is a forgone conclusion.”