by Pam Houston

Long, long time ago the Buffalo Girls were going to start a bookclub. And the dearest Trisha told us about this book. So Erin and Dayna and Rachel and I all bought the book, and we never bookclubbed it. I remember reading it then, but it was much more poignant for me, today.

And I never remembered the frequent mentions of 27!

“…that she has met him several times before only adds to what he calls her charming basket of imperfections..”

“You might forget, for example, that you live in a city where people have so many choices that they throw words away…you might forget that you never expected to be alone at thirty-one…or that all the people you know-without exception- have their hearts all wrapped around someone who won’t ever love them back.”

“I’m scared,” I say again, but this time it comes out stronger, almost like singing, as though it might be the first step-in fifty five or a thousand-towards something like a real life, the very first step toward something that will last.”

“What I’d like to know,” Carter said, “is when we are gonna grow up enough to get over the idea that there’s some perfect person out there for each of is who’s gonna make every day of our lives like Paradise.”

“And what does Socrates say?…he says you should be with someone you can get along with, and he spends thirty pages proving it…Logically….Like a theorem…Then he changes his mind and says you should be with the person who makes your live a living hell…What he says, is that when we fall full tilt in love with somebody, it’s because our soul recognizes another soul that it was mingled with on some previous plane…Even Socrates says we shouldn’t settle.”

“I thought that life was like that, that you could frame it like a photograph, according to your need. It was that part of me…The very same part that knew that for every positive image there was a pure and perfect negative, that right on the other side of that piece of paper called making things up, was a whole other story, and that story was about learning to believe in the things that had been there all along.”

“Find yourself a place you belong in the universe…a place where the dirt feels like goodness under your feet. Take the right picture and a man will walk into it. If you can bear him even a little, then for a while let him stay.”

“Everything good I’ve gotten in life I’ve gotten by plunging in, ” I said…

“Sure,” she said, “and everything bad you’ve gotten in your life you’ve gotten by plunging in.”

There was no arguing with that, so I stayed silent.

“It’s easy to believe being alone is the strong thing, but the river taught me long ago that it’s a stronger thing still to make yourself fragile. To say I love you, I dare you. I want you with me.”