Em

“Still, she knows one thing for certain: never judge a relationship unless you are the one wrapped up in its arms.”
― Alice Hoffman, Local Girls

“Every seven years our bodies change, every cell. Every seven years, we disappear.”
― Jenny Downham , Before I Die

“Before she realized he was next to her, he had placed his hands over hers on the countertop, then hooped his fingers through hers. Gretel looked up at him, so startled she might as well have been shot.
'I just wanted to wake you up', he said.
Which is exactly what he did. One look at him and her heart was racing. One look, and whatever had been before was all over.”
― Alice Hoffman, Local Girls

“In the darkest hour of winter, when the starlings had all flown away, Gretel Samuelson fell in love. It happened the way things are never supposed to happen in real life, like a sledgehammer, like a bolt from out of the blue. One minute she was a seventeen year-old senior in high school waiting for a Sicilian pizza to go; the next one she was someone whose whole world had exploded, leaving her adrift in the Milky Way, so far from earth she was walking on stars.”
― Alice Hoffman, Local Girls