Emily Giffin

I love him wholly and unconditionally and without reservation. I love him enough to sacrifice a friendship. I love him enough to accept my own happiness and use it, in turn, to make him happy back.

We are one of those couples i used to watch, thinking to myself that I'd never be on the inside of something so special. I remember reassuring myself that it probably looked nicer than it actually was, I am happy to be wrong about that.

So there the two of us were. Frozen in time, living in the moment, focused only on our immediate desires. Which of course included sex. Lots and lots of it.

his unwavering confidence - but now, it feels like a brand of indifference

I miss us too. I always have and I probably always will. Sometimes there are no happy endings. No matter what, I'll be losing something, someone. But maybe that's what it all comes down to. Love, not as a surge of passion, but as a choice to commit to something, someone, no matter what obstacles or temptations stand in the way. And maybe making that choice again and again, day in and day out, year after year,says more about love than never having a choice to make at all.

I know that the problem isn't the dream per se. It was the way I felt afterward, once awake.

Even if we no longer have much in common, we would have always had the past, which, in some ways, is just as important as the present or future. It is where we come from, what makes us who we are.

Although I'm sure there are plenty of tall, gorgeous, life-of-the-party guys who are also true to their wives, I happen to believe that a disproportionate number of them are cheaters.

In days that follow, I discover that anger is easier to handle than grief.

...recognizing that there is more heartbreak in continuous disappointment than a void...

It was about grace, she decides, something that has been missing from her own life. ... She wants to be the kind of person who can bestow unearned kindness on another, replace bitterness with empathy, forgive only for the sake of forgiving.

No second chances. It's not so much about morality, but about my inability to forgive. I am a champion grudge holder, and I don't think I could change this about myself even if I wanted to.

Buried beneath disappointment and fear, anger and pride, I just might find it in my heart to forgive.

Being married cuts on your freedom. Having a husband or a relationship at all puts constraints on you. by Michael.

a bit of a dirty fighter, quick with cutting words that he later regrets and doesn't really mean. Then again, I wonder if there isn't always a grain of truth in them, somewhere

...love is the sum of our choices, the strength of our commitments, the ties that bind us together.

My work has often been described as __hick lit_ and for the most part the term doesn__ bother me. I think it simply signals to readers that the book is about women, written for women (although many men enjoy my books), about issues that concern women (relationships, careers, etc.) The only thing that bothers me is when the label is used disparagingly, to imply that all chick lit is, by definition, superficial, beach-read fluff because I believe that this is akin to saying that all women are devoid of substance and the issues that concern us, are fundamentally trivial ones. And I take issue with that.

The mind-blowing, ridiculous sex which was the stuff of both poetry and porn - so unlike anything else I had ever experienced before.