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“Love was madness, was foolish, was senseless. Love was a problem, and yet somehow the loss of it was a worse one. Love made normal things, sensible things, make no sense at all. It made Meg almost refuse a good man who loved her. It made their mama give all their bread to the Hummels and wait forever for a chaplain husband who was practically a ghost. It made Amy and Poppet speak in their own private language, the language of long-lost and now-reunited twins, shipwrecked together in the seas of some faraway world. It made familiar things terrifying, and terrifying things familiar. It burned the wings off moths, sending them headlong into the flame. There was no escape, no recovery, no happy ending. You loved and you lost. Your heart beat and the beating left it bruised beyond recognition. You could feel it, or try not to feel it, or long for it, but you didn't get to keep it. It didn't matter how, or even why. He loved you or he didn't. She died or she didn't. He left or he didn't. In the end, you were always the loneliest person in the world, no matter who you were. Because that was what love was, the very raggedy edge of that feeling, the coming or the going of it. There was nothing else. Only shadows.” — Margaret Stohl