"I know that I am always alone, even when surrounded by people, so I let the emptiness in."
-We Are Okay by Nina LaCour

"And in our house, we enjoyed our togetherness but we enjoyed our apartness, too." 
-We Are Okay by Nina LaCour

"You go through life thinking there's so much you need.  Your favorite jeans and sweater.  The jacket with the faux-fur lining to keep you warm.  Your phone and your music and your favorite books.  Mascara.  Irish Breakfast tea and cappuccinos from Trouble Coffee.  You need you yearbooks, every stiffly posed school-dance photo, the notes your friends slipped into your locker.  You need the camera you got for your sixteenth birthday and the flowers you dried.  You need your notebooks full of the things you learned and don't want to forget.  You need your bedspread, white with black diamonds.  You need your pillow - it fits the way you sleep.  You need magazines promising self-improvement.  You need your running shoes and your sandals and your boots.  Your grade report from the semester you got straight As.  Your prom dress, your shiny earrings, your pendants on delicate chains.  You need your underwear, your light-colored bras and your black ones.  The dream catcher hanging above your bed.  The dozens and dozens of shells in glass jars. 

The cab was waiting outside the station. 

The airport, I said, but no sound came out.

'The airport,' I said, and we pulled away. 

You think you need all of it.

Until you leave with only your phone, your wallet, and a picture of your mother."
-We Are Okay by Nina LaCour

"Sometime later, we stand side by side at the sinks in the bathroom.  We look tired and something else, too.  It takes me a minute to identify it.  And then I know.

We look young."
-We Are Okay by Nina LaCour

"If our past selves got a glimpse of us now, what would they make of us?"
-We Are Okay by Nina LaCour

"She closes them.  I took at her.  I wish her everything good.  A friendly cab driver and short lines through security.  A flight with no turbulence and an empty seat next to her.  A beautiful Christmas.  I wish her more happiness than can fit in a person.  I wish her the kind of happiness that spills over."
-We Are Okay by Nina LaCour

"Those days and nights at the motel, I thought I was afraid of his ghost, but I wasn't.

I was afraid of my loneliness. 

And how I'd been tricked. 

And the way I'd convinced myself of so much: that I wasn't sad, that I wasn't alone.

I was afraid of the man who I'd loved, and how he had been a stranger. 

I was afraid of how I hated him.

How I wanted him back.

Of what was in those boxes and what I might someday discover and the chance I may have lost by leaving them behind. 

I was afraid of the way we'd lived without opening doors.

I was afraid we had never been at home with each other.

I was afraid of the lies I'd told myself.

The lies he'd told me.

I was afraid that our legs under the table had meant nothing.

The folding of laundry had meant nothing.

The tea and the cakes and the songs - all of it - had meant nothing."
-We Are Okay by Nina LaCour

"I was okay just a moment ago.  I will learn how to be okay again."
-We Are Okay by Nina LaCour

"There are degrees of obsession, of awareness, of grief, of insanity.  Those days and nights in the motel room I wished each of them against the other.  I tried to make sense of what had happened, but each time I came up short.  Each time I thought I may have understood, some line of logic snapped and I was thrust back into not knowing.

It's a dark place, not knowing. 

It's difficult to surrender to. 

But I guess it's where we live most of the time.  I guess it's where we all live, so maybe it doesn't have to be so lonely.  Maybe I can settle into it, cozy up to it, make a home inside uncertainty." 
-We Are Okay by Nina LaCour

"The whole world was out there, but I was in my mother's arms, and I didn't know it yet."
-We Are Okay by Nina LaCour