Why We Broke Up Coming of Age Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #4

"But, Min, I know it's lame, but those were my saddest times. I'd cry my eyes out when I realized, beg my mom in the middle of the night to take me back here to find them. Nobody got it, it's just a toy or you have plenty of cars or it's your responsibility to take care of your things. But I was so lost without them, those times when I lost them." (15.99)

Ed clings to toy trucks, which are relics from his childhood. So that's where he is with the whole "growing up" thing.

Quote #5

I thought how I only wave at Joe if I see him in the halls, how that can't even count as still talking to him, let alone staying friends like we promised we would when we ended it. But most of all, in the blaze and clatter of the park, I tried to put together how I saw it then and how I saw it before…the way it's different again now with you, with your friends gone from my Fridays and no more bonfires lighting up my eyes in the park and you just an ex-boyfriend about to get his stuff thrown back on his doorstep." (15.69)

Min has a hard time reconciling the past and the present. But that's what she's going to have to do to move forward. Spoiler alert: It's what everyone has to do in order to move forward at some point.

Quote #6

"But before, not so long ago—my own rose from prom still OK on the mirror, dried but not a corpse—you were just Ed Slaterton, jocky hero, handsome in the student newspaper and star of a million strands of gossip. Now…you were something else fierce and fiery in my chest and I tried to put it together in my head, the print and the negative, the boyfriend and the celebrity shadow." (15.69)

Min thinks that Ed is not the same man that he used to be. With their breakup, he comes full circle, fading back into the shadow he was before.